Network

The real internet speed that I’m getting at the moment from my ISP [1] are 60 Mb/s download and 6 Mb/s upload in coaxial, since they dont want to offer me optic fiber.

Devices

At the moment I’m using the following devices.

• Modem
• TP-Link router
• TP-Link repeater
• Netgear router
• Multiple Cat 5 Ethernet cables

Configuration

Ip Addresses

LXCs and VMs are in the same physical server, but each one has its own IP and MAC addresses, so they are shown to the network as separate devices.

The IP addresses of each LXC and VM are not going to be named or numbered so there won’t be any security leak.

TP-Link Router

It’s the main router connected to the modem and all the networks devices. It can be configured through web GUI typing its IP in the browser.

The main router serves as the DHCP server for the rest of the devices.

The ports needed to be open must be set in that router, which I’m not going to name for security reasons.

To open a port simply go to NAT Forwarding, Virtual Servers. Then specify the internal and external port, the internal IP and the protocol.

No-Ip DDNS

Public addresses assigned by the ISP are dynamic, which means they change from time to time.

Static public addresses cost extra money and not all the ISPs offer them and are oriented for enterprises only.

Instead of using a regular DNS server software like bind9 which is only useful for static addresses, I used No-IP.

No-IP is a dynamic DNS that will always point the public IP address of the router to a domain name, even if its IP changes.

It offers up to 3 free dynamic domains.

For this project I used the following domain names.

1. A record named masterserver.serveminecraft.net
2. CNAME record named efrenthemaster.serveminecraft.net with the target set as masterserver.serveminecraft.net
3. CNAME record named masterstats.serveminecraft.net with the target set as masterserver.serveminecraft.net

To set it up I just went into the router GUI and then to Network, Dynamic DNS

There I typed the A record domain name and No-IP login credentials. It takes a little of time to propagate the DNS. That can be checked here.

TP-Link Repeater

The only reason why I’m using the repeater is because I haven’t done a structured network cabling at home, so the only way to connect devices in a different floor is bringing internet through the power socket with a repeater. It doesnt require further configuration, just plug the transmitter to the TP-Link router and the power socket, and the receiver to the power socket in my room plugged to the Netgear router.

Netgear Router

The repeater only comes with 2 RJ45 plugs and I have multiple devices in my room. The solution is configuring a router I had laying around to serve as a switch for now, since I dont have the 24 port gigabit switch yet.

It has 4 gigabit ethernet ports that are enough for the purposes of the project.

To configure it as a switch I did the following steps.

• Plug the repeater RJ45 into one of its gigabit ethernet ports
• Disable DHCP server
• Change its IP to a non used one in the same subnet
• Disable WiFi channel

After doing that simply plug the devices to the rest of the ethernet ports and it’s done

Footnotes

[1]	Internet Service Provider