The ‘flawed guidance’ part of the strapline above is not to be taken entirely as wry or self-deprecating: I genuinely have no idea what I’m doing. I have no computing qualifications and, before I began this project, no Linux experience whatsoever. Anything and everything I learn is through Google. I will be posting details of the things I’ve learned; some of them have worked for me in my specific situation. Following them may cause instant death, I don’t know; It’s unlikely, but possible. I welcome any corrections if anything I post is inelegant & inefficient or abhorrent & dangerous (it’s why I’ve enabled comments!) so if you spot any factual errors (I might take advice over grammatical errors more personally…) then please leave a comment below and I’ll look at correcting it. I can try and answer any questions that are left there, but almost everything I know will be posted here so it’s unlikely I’ll be able to assist. With all that said:

The plan is to construct a self-contained computer-network in-a-box.

Criteria: Beyond the cost of the metal, the network needs to be free to assemble (certainly as-in-beer; as much as possible as-in-libré) and secure/stable enough to run unattended 24/7 with an always-on internet connection at one end and a wireless network at the other. 

Since I’m undertaking this project, for the most part, as a learning exercise, then if there are technologies accessible to me (in terms of cost, hardware, scale, etc.) that are generally accepted as “the right way to do it” then they should be employed instead of less-commonly-used alternatives. This will undoubtedly result in a network that is absolutely overkill for the number of users it will be serving (two, maximum, at any one time), but should result in a network that is:

• Theoretically scalable to any number of users I might want to one day add to it
• Better documented for when everything goes wrong
• Easier to fit together, since it will almost certainly have been done before
• More stable, since the technologies used will be more mature

That said, I certainly won’t be shying away from newer, less-utilised technologies if they provide sufficient benefits (and prove too cool to not include…)

I’ve been deliberately vague in terms of what I’m actually trying to achieve here, as this is more a mission statement than a step-by-step outline of the project (which will come in a future post), and this post (as well as any others) may well be added to or amended if the mission changes enough to invalidate even the scant plan that I’ve described here, so take it (and everything else) with a handful of salt.

I’ll almost certainly live to regret this.