Snakeoil Salesman 2 channel setup

[agent_kith]

Been MIA lately as my home is in a bit of a mess as I'm logically re-designing my home network. The experience is painful to say the least, but the hurdle might finally be over. Here's the revamped homelab system now (i.e. the system that I'm using to develop Snakeoil OS, as well as serving music to my Snakeoil PC).
 

   

 

Dev1 and Dev2 machines are the computers I'm using for all Snakeoil development work (Dev2 is mainly for testing). These machines have a special remote KVM mode where I can remotely access these computer's screen, mouse and keyboard.

Storage is where all my music and Snakeoil source code are stored. In the future I would like to move the source code to somewhere more secure (e.g. github or gitlab).

VDSL is a modem that connects my home to the Internet (because of Australia politics we don't have proper fiber). The mode is set to bridge mode and connect to the firewall.

The firewall is the gateway between the Internet and my home network. 4 links from the firewall are connected to the Unifi 48 port switch. And all my home equipment are connected to this said switch (some directly, others indirect via another edge switch).

Now this is where the complications began - VLANs. I have logically seperated out all the functions of my network (e.g. dev machines don't really need to talk to PVR and so on). So putting them on different VLANs now isolate them against each other. Should there be a case where they need to communicate, it's all handled by the firewall. For now I have logically seperated out my network like so:

   

The media VLAN only contains my Snakeoil PC and the Storage/NAS. Sure other devices on other VLANs can still communicate with the NAS. But the nature of switches mean the Snakeoil PC will now see a lot less traffic now compared to when everything is on the same network.

I still use tablets/mobiles to remotely control the Snakeoil PC, wireless is now handled by a dedicated wireless access point (see below). The firewall will route the connection from my handheld device all the way to the snakeoil PC.

   

Getting all this up and running took a lot of effort because that requires re-configuring everything, setting up the firewall rules and more. The task is not finished yet, but we're more than 50% there.

What's next? This unifi switch has 2 SFP and 2 SFP+ ports. My intention is to cost a cabler to run an optical cable from this switch back to my listening room and then connect my Snakeoil PC via an optical cable. This means my listening rig will be electronically isolated from all the gear in my home lab system.

So, a monumental attempt (for me anyway) to experiment what Ethernet and electrical isolation bring to music. Part #1 is almost complete, part #2 will have to wait... With a working home network now it's time for me to work on Blind Testing Update 2.