A few days ago, my delighted wife and I completed purchase on a bit of condo space in Chicago. Given your beloved author is the primary techie of our house, it fell to me to build up our own at-home network. That’s right: finally, the chance to fully control the thing that opened our little home to the endless horrors of the World Wide Web! My fingers shot dark lightning as I cackled menacingly at all who would listen: now was the hour of my revenge!
For years now, and for years before then, I had moved primarily into already lived-in spaces with wifi and ethernet already thrown together and ready for my arrival. Different roommates prefer different methods: the best one I can remember was a colleague of mine who set up an underground pipe into an outlaying structure so we could enjoy glorious 802.11b signal while we barbecued in the backyard. This would be my aim: getting the best stuff you could buy at the time.
Driving out the Modem-Lenders
The angle I was doing my best to avoid was the monthly $15 rental of a 4-port modem/router. This is a common arrangement, because it:
a. makes installation a no-brainer. Plug the damn thing in. Turn it on.
b. makes your ISP a bundle of money. Around $15/month =$180/year for a $300 device that can last up to a decade.
I don’t like using rental routers for two reasons. First, I am a Pennsylvania Dutchman at heart and refuse to allow some corporation sell me resources I have available. Second, at the end of the day, you have zero control over what happens to your network. Sure, your external IP will likely remain the same, so you can set access rules accordingly for whatever compute resources you would rather rent from the cloud. But what about controlling your network from within the flimsy DMZ that RNC, American Telephone & Telegraph or Comcast provides? My experience was somewhat disappointing with these services.
There have been times when I assigned static addresses to different devices. These assignments were wiped from the router’s memory when I checked on them weeks later. This led to failed backups, inaccessible resources, and obscene mumbling while I fumbled for my spare keyboard because I didn’t want to reach around and unplug the Nixeus from the unreachable back panel of my monitor. Bad times were had, so nix to allowing any ISP equipment past the coaxial cable. Laddie, they cannot be trusted. Indeed, they want your freedom!
My skepticism towards these corporations does not come from a place of paranoia so much as power dynamics. They’re immense machines with a lot of assets to underwrite and maintain. They’re selling primarily to elderly grandmas and people who like cat videos. That I need their product to do my job is circumstantial: from their perspective, I’m the sucker born last minute. They don’t expect me to flip between DNS providers or to establish static addresses. And they have no reason to believe otherwise. It’s the directive of every profit-seeking entity to use every lever available to seek the widest possible market at the lowest margin.
So, here’s how I did it:
But, thankfully, we don’t live in an autocracy where we are forced to buy government-brand radios. Armed with this crucial economic liberty, I went down to Micro Center to purchase a modem. Since gigabit speeds would help keep me future-proof, I chose the Arris Surfboard SB8200. Returning home, I tried to contact Comcast.
For about 3 hours.
I’m not sure if it’s the plague or if Comcast’s service has always been this bad, but when you need to change your name to Xfinity to avoid bad press I think it speaks for itself. Sadly, they’re the only gigabit service available in my building, so I signed my name in blood and waited patiently. Some time later, I got ahold of 2 representatives at once via their chat service and callback. Ye gods, what luck. Within a few brief minutes, the colored lights were blinking in the way that the good book ordained right. Unfortunately, this was only a modem. I would need something to spread the signal.
Curtly thanking the Comcast rep, I hung up and returned to Micro. The masked faces therein recommended the LinkySys Velop system, which I recommend heartily. While I haven’t yet given Google Fi or Eero a shot, it’s much simpler than dealing with Cisco controllers and APs. Just plug one node out of 3 into the ethernet on your router and, kaboom. You are now the administrator of your at-home network, the guru everyone goes to when they need the secret password. Best of all, you get nearly the same level of control without the bothersome CLI.
Yeah, that’s how I did it
And I hope I inspire you to do the same. It gives you greater control and more power over your own life and data. Remember the two reasons I listed above about encourage companies to pressure you into using their own hardware? There’s a third:
c. they want access to your real estate.
From time to time, you may notice open networks labeled xfinitywifi. The company describes what this network does with a small sub-section here. The dirt is that the device you are renting, in your space, (for your cash,) is wide open. Users you do not know use your bandwidth because they are customers of an entity that bills you too. You are never compensated for the data that gets used over the connection you pay for. Data may be segregated, but I don’t know how. The basic issue is that you have no control over this network and Comcast wants it that way. If you use their hardware, you give away advertising via the cellphones of your neighbors and pedestrians outside your home.
It’s free water, and they control the pipe.
I don’t need to prattle on about how important it is that everybody gets unfettered access to all data available. The big boys certainly have it, and if we don’t exploit it ourselves, they’ll use it to exploit us. Getting online the way I described above isn’t only possible, it’s both affordable and doable. And, again, I advise you try to do the same.
Happy hacking!
~JWH