Been fiddling with the home network / general computing environment the last few days out of a general plan to make things cooler and also have more reliable internets.
Done so far:
- New 5 port gigabit switch for connecting desktop and phone and anything else that comes along
- Got VoIP phone from A&A installed and setup.
- Switching to running the ADSL on a phone line managed by A&A in order to have a single point of contact when it doesn't work. Line installed, waiting for them to sort out providing ADSL over it.
- Got the final bits to setup the new OpenBSD router, in particular a USB to serial adapter.
- Spent a while trying to build a new image for my Nanonote. Got it building now, and reported a couple of missing dependencies in the build process.
- Acquired a USB to micro-SD card adapter and copied all my music onto a micro-SD card for use in the nanonote.
I was amused to note it took a guy from BT Openreach about 2.5 hours to install a phone line. And he went to the wrong street initially. Still, he did turn up quite early, which is a positive.
Stuff I'm still working on:
- Waiting for BT to actually provide the ADSL on the new phone line they're supposed to. Apparently there's a "line plant" problem.
- Actually building the new OpenBSD router, rather than just owning the pile of bits.
- Waiting for the new 8 port gigabit switch for another room (with more computers) to arrive, and installing it.
- Installing new mattress (okay not strictly computer related).
- Doing a bit more hacking on the Nanonote to get it going as a media player.
- Fixing the broken bookcase whose brokenness I spotted whilst moving things around so the BT guy could install another line.
I am very pleased with the VoIP stuff so far and can't recommend A&A as suppliers enough.
