Gigabit internet incoming - what can I do with it?

[Blackima]

TL;DR: Those of you with gigabit (/fast) internet, what do you do with it? And those of you who want it, what would you do with it?

So for the last two years I've been stuck with some pretty mediocre internet:

 

 

But after two years of trying to get fibre to the premises, in two weeks we're finally going to be getting a 1 Gigabit Up/Down fibre connection to my flat. The wiring has been installed, so we're just waiting for it to be activated. After so long of pursuing this, now that it is right around the corner... I'm not sure what I should do with it. I want to make the most of it, and I don't want it to go to waste on me. So I'm looking to you guys for inspiration.

The download speed isn't that exciting for me, I'm already used to living with 10Mb for HD netflix/youtube playback. But the gigabit, unlimited upload is something that opens up SO many opportunities (surely?).

It's been about a decade since I built and ran any home servers, and these were really low-bandwidth low-budget 'servers' built from spare parts I could find; I'm talking tiny email and web servers for hosting emails, websites and small forums for friends. 17 year old me would have known exactly what to do with all of this, but 27 year old me is out of touch with his old hobbies and has no idea where to start and rekindle the fun he used to have building and running servers.

One thing I definitely want to do is build a NAS server with a *lot* of storage (12-18TB RAID5, depending on budget). I've heard that FreeNAS is the way to go, but if this is going to be my one and only multi-purpose server, should I be comiting myself to a FreeBSD-based OS, or will this limit what else I can do on the server? If I had a NAS i'd also like to run a PLEX media server (is there anything better out there?) for streaming my movie collection out to my phone; but should this be on the same server as NAS or separate machine?

While there's 'unlimited' data usage, I can't use it for commercial purposes. I would still like to use the connection to help friends and family however I can. What kind of services are there out there I can host for them? Some of my friends still play minecraft and pay for a server, so if I could I'd like to host for them. How about offering a proxy server; family in australia / usa would be able to watch location-restricted UK video (e.g. BBC iplayer) if I did that, right?

I'm just throwing some ideas out there, but I'd love some inspiration from you lot. I've long neglected my computing roots (and my neowin account!), and I'd like to get back into it.

Thanks!

[Sikh]

FreeNAS is very powerful. You can install pled, mine craft, transmission, Sab, etc on it. Everything you've suggested is a great idea and I would recommend you do it.

Since you wanna help friends/family out, you can have them create plex accounts, and invite them to your server. This way your collection is their collection and maybe you wont need to set up a proxy server then.

I would definitely recommend pfsense as a firewall/router. With that connection your going to need an edge device that can handle the traffic.

Are you finally getting google fibre/Att fibre or did you find a company that would build fibre if you paid for it? I know fibre builds are expansive but some companies will build for residential if the money is there.

[123456789A]

I would start my own search engine.

[PNWDweller]

While you have the NAS idea and building a mountain of storage, it would be wise to do an encrypted cloud backup of said NAS storage.  I am in the process of migrating my NAS from freeBSD format (NAS4Free a.k.a. Offshoot of FreeNAS) which really prefers the UFS format.  Having a large amount of data makes it incredibly hard to use in Centos which is what I am shooting for so I can build my own cloud server (owncloud.org).   With upload speeds like what you are going to have, sending your backups to the services would not necessarily be an issue time wise.

 

Of course, I know that if you are into Linux, you can readily snag their DVD ISOs within seconds as opposed to several minutes.  One thing you shall learn though, with all that speed, you are only limited to as fast as the server you are accessing can serve it to you, and don't forget, the number of hops between you and them.

 

Congrats on the speed boost, I would be lying if I said I was not jealous.

[starman444]

Geez, youll have more than me. I have 100 megabits simetimes 113 on wired, its the fastest home connection here in Oz at the moment. Wireless can go faster in some areas

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/1132498408

On wifi

[PaulATMOS]

I would start my own search engine.

Have you got your own search engine algorithm ?

Geez, youll have more than me. I have 100 megabits simetimes 113 on wired, its the fastest home connection here in Oz at the moment. Wireless can go faster in some areas

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/1132498408

On wifi

Yeah, 4G can get faster sometimes but all the Telcos are pretty stingy with their download quotas at present.

TL;DR: Those of you with gigabit (/fast) internet, what do you do with it? And those of you who want it, what would you do with it?

So for the last two years I've been stuck with some pretty mediocre internet:

 

 

But after two years of trying to get fibre to the premises, in two weeks we're finally going to be getting a 1 Gigabit Up/Down fibre connection to my flat. The wiring has been installed, so we're just waiting for it to be activated. After so long of pursuing this, now that it is right around the corner... I'm not sure what I should do with it. I want to make the most of it, and I don't want it to go to waste on me. So I'm looking to you guys for inspiration.

The download speed isn't that exciting for me, I'm already used to living with 10Mb for HD netflix/youtube playback. But the gigabit, unlimited upload is something that opens up SO many opportunities (surely?).

It's been about a decade since I built and ran any home servers, and these were really low-bandwidth low-budget 'servers' built from spare parts I could find; I'm talking tiny email and web servers for hosting emails, websites and small forums for friends. 17 year old me would have known exactly what to do with all of this, but 27 year old me is out of touch with his old hobbies and has no idea where to start and rekindle the fun he used to have building and running servers.

One thing I definitely want to do is build a NAS server with a *lot* of storage (12-18TB RAID5, depending on budget). I've heard that FreeNAS is the way to go, but if this is going to be my one and only multi-purpose server, should I be comiting myself to a FreeBSD-based OS, or will this limit what else I can do on the server? If I had a NAS i'd also like to run a PLEX media server (is there anything better out there?) for streaming my movie collection out to my phone; but should this be on the same server as NAS or separate machine?

While there's 'unlimited' data usage, I can't use it for commercial purposes. I would still like to use the connection to help friends and family however I can. What kind of services are there out there I can host for them? Some of my friends still play minecraft and pay for a server, so if I could I'd like to host for them. How about offering a proxy server; family in australia / usa would be able to watch location-restricted UK video (e.g. BBC iplayer) if I did that, right?

I'm just throwing some ideas out there, but I'd love some inspiration from you lot. I've long neglected my computing roots (and my neowin account!), and I'd like to get back into it.

Thanks!

Nice!

Which ISP in UK? Cost?

[krmathis]

I am having pretty much the exact same questions as you. :)G

Got gigabit fiber 3 weeks ago, and to be honest it's completely overkill. At least as of now... Reading news and forums, playing music through Spotify, and some web-tv barely touch the line.

 

My connection:

 

Considering setting up my own server and NAS, but have little to none experience. Keeping an eye on this thread..

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

There was a time when I went from 9600 baud to a university network, which was like... orgasmic. Downloading a song went from 15 minutes to some seconds. Even with that, "streamed" video through RealPlayer was hilariously low resolution. With modern speeds, though, streaming audio and video in high quality while multitasking isn't even something I think twice about.

 

I'm not sure what the immediate future holds for bandwidth usage. Probably a lot more integration with "the cloud" and between devices. The choke point will be cellular networks (which I think will turn more towards wide distributed wi-fi in populated areas).

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

As your in the UK how did you manage to get a Gigabit Up / Down connection to your home without paying for a leased line? (presuming you didn't do that) A New build flat with FTTP?

You should run Vmware Esxi as the OS on your home server, that way each server you want to run can have be a different Virtual Machine. This makes changing / moving things around at a later date easy as pie. You can even pass real hardware though to a VM, such as a Raid controller or graphics card.

 

On my home server I run the following:

• Pfsense - Router / Firewall
• Plex - Share your media library with your friends / family anywhere in the world.
• SFTP Server - I have an SFTP server setup which my web server in a data center connects to and dumps MySQL backups every 12 hours and a full wwwroot backup every weekend. I also have my downloads / media on there so friends can download ISO's i got from Technet and my media if they desire.
• Game Server - I run a Unreal Tournament 2004 server, which to be honest requires next to no bandwidth.
• OpenVPN - OpenVPN access server is very easy to setup, i can securely connect to my home network and is also perfect to get around Three's Teathering block by connecting my phone to the VPN, then tethering to my laptop when away from home.

For that I have the following VM's:

 

Server 2012 R2 Essentials - this backups all the various PC's around the house each day. (You could even backup to Windows Azure for an offsite backup) I also use this VM as my NAS / Plex Server and SFTP server with a raid controller passed through to it.

 

Pfsense - This runs in its own VM

 

OpenVPN Access Server - this also runs in its own VM

 

UT 2004 Server - this runs on its own VM too.

 

I do all the above with a 15mbps upload, the most demanding thing there is Plex when multiple people are steaming from me at the same time, even then i can have 4 concurrent friends streaming from me at 3-4mbps perfectly fine, which tbh never happens. With a connection like yours you could easily just let friends stream at what ever bitrate they desire and not have to worry about it.

 

Hope that gives you some ideas.

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

You will also be able to start viewing UltraHD/4K netflix content, if you have an compatible Monitor / Tv.

[Ryster]

You will also be able to start viewing UltraHD/4K netflix content, if you have an compatible Monitor / Tv.

 

To be fair though, you don't need Gigabit for that. Just 4x whatever the current bandwidth requirement for 1080p is.

[cork1958]

While you have the NAS idea and building a mountain of storage, it would be wise to do an encrypted cloud backup of said NAS storage.  I am in the process of migrating my NAS from freeBSD format (NAS4Free a.k.a. Offshoot of FreeNAS) which really prefers the UFS format.  Having a large amount of data makes it incredibly hard to use in Centos which is what I am shooting for so I can build my own cloud server (owncloud.org).   With upload speeds like what you are going to have, sending your backups to the services would not necessarily be an issue time wise.

 

Of course, I know that if you are into Linux, you can readily snag their DVD ISOs within seconds as opposed to several minutes.  One thing you shall learn though, with all that speed, you are only limited to as fast as the server you are accessing can serve it to you, and don't forget, the number of hops between you and them.

 

Congrats on the speed boost, I would be lying if I said I was not jealous.

 "you are only limited to as fast as the server you are accessing can serve it to you, and don't forget, the number of hops between you and them"

 

Just remember that most servers any where on the net DO NOT even go that fast, so that fast connection is partially a total waste!

[fusi0n]

Porn.

[+John Teacake MVC]

As asked by fellow UK residents, How and where? And How much? 

 

I would run a TOR exit node, Something I have always wanted to do but not had a "TOR friendly" ISP. Maybe on a virtual machine. 

 

You say Flat? I take it that this connection is not shared between everyone else in your block. Its not a University connection is it? It might be heavily restricted if it is for students. I have seen from first hand experience this before. 

[Blackima]

As asked by fellow UK residents, How and where? And How much?

I would run a TOR exit node, Something I have always wanted to do but not had a "TOR friendly" ISP. Maybe on a virtual machine.

You say Flat? I take it that this connection is not shared between everyone else in your block. Its not a University connection is it? It might be heavily restricted if it is for students. I have seen from first hand experience this before.

A private company called Hyperoptic provides fibre straight to residential complexes (FTTB). Since we have no cabinets for FTTC nearby, it was the only option available for fibre-speeds. They normally charge

[Ian S.]

The first thing I would do is check for bottlenecks along any of your devices, including routers, modems, network cards, network cables, and the devices themselves. Would recommend a new router to handle that with good wifi and maybe a smart TV to stream content, if you don't already have one. A NAS would be really nice and make sure all cables and cards are Gigabit Ethernet supportive.

[PNWDweller]

Nas4Free has much lower overhead requirements system wise.  You can run it with 1GB of RAM as opposed to the 8 that FreeNas requires.  As for Owncloud, you can install it side by side with Nas4free.  I am moving away from it though for a couple of reasons.  One being that, I for whatever reason could not get Owncloud to see my NAS drive that I had all my data on, so it became an issue for me.  This turned out to be a big pain in the A(% headache for me for the past few days as the drive was UFS formatted.  I have just finished moving all data from the UFS drive to an EXT2 drive (formatted in Nas4free) a few hours ago and am installing Centos to get the Owncloud done and other server goodies I am going to install like a media server.

 

In any event, if you are going to take advantage of using your new internet speeds to serve content publicly, I would be sure to confirm with your ISP that doing so is not prohibited against their TOS.  Some may want you to go with a business account to allow such a thing.  If all is good, then you could probably go wild by doing whatever you want to do with that speed.    I personally would probably take advantage of the extra bandwidth to stream high definition security video of my property, maybe set up a private Shoutcast server so I could play my library only to me while on the road.  I know I would probably at first go nuts downloading just about every Linux ISO so I could try all of them out without having to spend much time.

[Krome]

I am having pretty much the exact same questions as you. :)G

Got gigabit fiber 3 weeks ago, and to be honest it's completely overkill. At least as of now... Reading news and forums, playing music through Spotify, and some web-tv barely touch the line.

 

My connection:

 

Considering setting up my own server and NAS, but have little to none experience. Keeping an eye on this thread..

DAM!  Yeah I would set up a very PRIVATE HTTP Server / Streaming server / and NAS server / FTP server

HTTP server for posting a private blog or for the purpose of monitoring your home... Streaming server would work with the HTTP server and you can listen or watch all of your movies or music from ANYwhere in the world... NAS cloud you can access your files from anywhere in the world... FTP so you can access your files the easy way

 

[+John Teacake MVC]

Thanks for posting the company name! I have registered my interest actually.

 

This should be used as an example of what a Thread should be like!! 

 

Good clear concise question followed up by good clear concise follow ups. 

[+John Teacake MVC]

A private company called Hyperoptic provides fibre straight to residential complexes (FTTB). Since we have no cabinets for FTTC nearby, it was the only option available for fibre-speeds. They normally charge

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

This is really really interesting. One of the things I was worried about was picking the right OS for compatability with other services I'd want to run, but if there isn't that much of a perfomance hit with virtualising, then this would be a great way forward without having to invest in lots of different hardware.  Is it safe running the pfsense VM on the same physical hardware as your local services? I'm asuming that the pfsense VM is given access to the physical WAN network port, and the other VMs are given access to the physical LAN network port, and the pfsense stops any attacks from entering the LAN. But wouldn't it technically be possible for someone to attack the underlying ESXi itself; that has access to both ports, but I don't know what's protecting the WAN port for the ESXi.

I heard that FreeNAS doesn't work very well with virtualisation, though. Particularly with ZFS and RAID-Z1, FreeNAS apparently needs direct access to the drives to work as intended. It's a real pity, though, because the machine running FreeNAS is going to need 16GB ECC RAM, so it would have been nice if that same hardware could be used with virtualised machines. Is it possible to run ESXi within FreeNAS? So far I've seen people try and get virtualbox running in a jail in FreeNAS with limited success.

 

If you have 3x network interfaces you can use one for the WAN one for the LAN, then another for the Esxi management interface so it would be impossible for anyone to attack Esxi without having physical access to your server, as Esxi is only allowing connections to manage it from the management interface.

 

As for FreeNAS i don't have any experiencing with that unfortunately, however as I mentioned you can pass a real SATA / RAID controller though to a Virtual Machine which would give it direct access to any physical hard drives connected to that controller.

 

That's what I have done, in the screenshot below you can see my Windows Server VM is installed on a Virtual Hard drive stored on the Esxi datastore, however it then has direct access to all the physical hard drives connected to my SATA / RAID controller. That might be something to look in to and see if its a viable solution.

 

[binaryzero]

How long is a piece of rope?

[farmeunit]

I use Subsonic and Plex. Subsonic has a great Android app and I like the Subsonic interface a little better for a large music collection. I don't know if you can run it on FreeNAS or other systems. I run my media and everything on a regular Core-i3 machine running Windows 8.1.

It also does my torrents, Sickbeard, SabNZB, etc..

[dragon2611]

Just don't try and run a datacenter off it or try to run the the next google 

 

It won't be a dedicated 1Gbit/s but rather a contended service they won't mind you downloading uploading large files but they'll probably get upset eventually if you keep trying to backup the entire internet.

 

After all a 1Gbit/s connection running flat out can do something insane like 320TB a month in each direction and there's no way an ISP is going to tolerate that unless you're paying for a dedicated uncontended pipe.

 

Also the UBNT edgerouter can do 1Gbit/s as long as you're not using anything that causes the HW acceleration to be disabled.

[+John Teacake MVC]

You seriously need to get a Tor Exit node going on that thing and then read this and the associated articles.

 

https://blog.mozilla.org/it/2015/01/28/deploying-tor-relays/

 

See if you can break the record.