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FOSS at Home

Introduction

This page summarizes my lecture on FOSS in home networking, telephony, and entertainment.

Devices and their Responsibilities

Here is a summary of the devices, there operating systems, and their responsibilities/services. The order is bottom (network infrastructure) to top (applications) 
  • cable modem/DSL modem - black box 
  • gigabit switch - black box
  • Linksys SPA3102 analog phone adapter - black box
  • Linksys WRT54GL router - Tomato 1.28
    • DHCP server
    • DNS caching 
    • QoS
    • Dynamic DNS client
    • ssh server 
  • Linksys NSLU2 embedded server - OpenWrt
    • printer server (p910nd)
    • scanner server (saned)
    • telephony server (asterisk) - for control over what calls are handled by which provider
  • Zotac MAG-ND01 - Ubuntu 11.04
    • CIFS server (Windows file sharing)
    • MythTV DVR backend
    • MySQL server
    • DAAP iTunes music server
    • Icinga host/service monitoring service
    • Apache web server 
      • MythTV web interface
      • Icinga web interface
  • Mac mini - OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
    • MythTV DVR frontend
    • Plex media center frontend (Netflix etc.)
    • web browser
    • other applications

Discussion

So you might ask: why did I separate the backend from the frontend?

This is a bit complicated. I absolutely wanted Netflix in the living room. Netflix requires Silverlight with a certain DRM mechanism (digital rights management). This means Windows or OS X, no Linux. I don't like Windows for various technical reasons, so this leaves OS X. But even though MythTV backend runs on OS X, there is no support for my Hauppauge HVR-950Q USB digital tuner. This means I would have to use EyeTV (commercial software) instead of MythTV for the DVR functionality, which would put me at Elgato's mercy in terms of paying for upgrades etc.

I used to run Linux on the frontend with Windows + Netflix running in a virtual machine, but the video performance was slightly less nice and I wanted the nice, user-friendly Plex interface (with support for the Apple remote) instead of using Netflix through the web browser.
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devices.jpg
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Konstantin Läufer,
Jul 7, 2011, 12:13 PM
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