At 11:59 AM 1/12/2011, Jim postulated wrote:
On 01/11/2011 01:31 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
> It's not about the number of devices. That's IPv4-think. It's
about the number
> of segments. I see a world where each home-entertainment cluster would
> be a separate segment (today, few things use IP, but, future HE solutions
> will include Monitors, Amps, Blu-Ray players, and other Media gateways
> that ALL have ethernet ports for control and software update).
Your future is now, Owen. I have four network devices at my primary
television -- the TV itself, TiVo, PS3, and Wii (using the wired
adapter). All told, I have seven networked home entertainment devices
in my house, with another (Blu-Ray player) likely coming soon. I feel
confident in saying that my use case isn't unusual these days.
While a lot of the scalability concerns are blown off as "not applying
to typical consumers," we're quickly getting to the point where your
average joe IS somewhat likely to have different classes of devices that
might benefit from being on separate subnets.
Jima
I helped a friend setup his "home network" recently. He is using an
old Linksys Router with no v6 support. I like to be conservative and
only allocate what might be needed ... part of my "Defense in Depth"
strategy to provide some layer of "security" with NAT (yes, I know -
my security by obscurity is to use something from 172.16) and a
limited amount of addresses to allocate (not to mention WPA2 - he had
default no security when I first got there). Used to be a /29 would
be sufficient for any home. But, before I knew it, he had a wireless
printer, laptop, and 4 iPhones all needing the new wireless
passphrase to connect, plus he was anticipating 2 more laptops (one
each for his children - to whom 2 of the iPhones belonged), and
addresses set aside for guests and the occasional business visitor
(he works from home). I left him configured with a /28, and told him
to call me if he anticipated more.
As a side security note - we lost the laptop on the "new" secured
network before I tracked down that it had automatically logged in to
his neighbor's (also unprotected) network on reboot.
Ted