Smartaira fiber. Best I can gather they’re using a a managed switch and segmenting each port. Probably per floor. They sprcialize in large scale wifi deployment and that’s what they’re doing. It’s a genius way to provide basic web access with a minimal hardware footprint for the provider and no hardware but a POE AP for the users. It just sucks for those of us who know better.

That’s an interesting concept. I bought two weeks ago when they still had cable modems and a setup I know I could have worked with. I’m politically active so getting on the board should be an option. However, what’s in the best interest of the vast, vast majority of the owners? Your standard service that requires complex gateways and running coax all over your apartment with hardware rental fees and TV number and location limits, or a system where your smart TV can connect anywhere and your iPhone can always get onto Facebook and there’s a 24/7 tech support line to change your WiFi password for you? If it costs each owner $1 more per month (500 units) for my preferred network architecture so three residents can save $70 per month ($210) I would be failing in my fiduciary duty by charging the masses more so a select few can self host. We are the minority and the rest don’t care.

I actually gave it 44000-65535 and it’s connecting well. That’s another reason why I wanted a more robust network: IOT VLAN to segregate that risk.

The setup is very strange. They don’t provide a router. They took the old phone lines going to each unit (which appears to have been done in Cat5 decades ago) and put an RJ-45 end on it. That plugs into a POE powered wireless access point with two more ports on it. Plugging my laptop in, the gateway does not respond to HTTP requests. The tech who installed it said I have to call the home office to change my wireless password. I got them to disable the wireless so I could put my router on the other end but I’m either running on a network that my shady small time ISP has full control over or I’m behind a double NAT. Speeds were 900+ up and down though.

I might see if I can get the AP re-enabled and let the switch connect to it directly if that even fixes the Switch’s NAT issues.

I just got a Ubiquti Dream Machine that can do fail over so the other connection won’t be completely wasted but $70 per month could be saved by finding another way.

A little searching seems like Cloudflare Argo tunnels might be a good route to try. And possibly free, though I’m not opposed to paying for a better service. There seems to be a fair amount of step by step documentation on this. I’ll demo this on my lab as I haven’t moved it to the new apartment yet.

It depends on the app. Yes, I could run my password manager on the VPS since that takes up virtually no space or bandwidth. The odd IP camera needs to be local, the Minecraft server with mods needs local CPU power and RAM (presumably).

I ended up going with tailscale. Every other option exposed my secret services to the Internet, even if behind a password. Tailscale was ridiculously easy to set up too. The docker compose I used had Heimdall in it too so I was able put all my links on there. Procedure is connect with tailscale app -> go to http://illegalshit -> click/tap on relevant link. I might pull back on my Nginx proxy targets and port forwards for this more secure system.

What happens if tailscale goes down though?