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mothyfamilyour own network

The lay of the land

The whole network, one picture

Two machines in a rented server room, one on a desk at home, and your screen โ€” joined by one private tunnel. Tap any box and the panel fills in: what it is, what it does, and whether you need to care about it. The answer is usually โ€œno, that is Codyโ€™s problemโ€.

the public internet โ€” one front door, and every open door written down in the datacentre at home the front door, and every screen you touch the private tunnel โ€” only devices we invite Akari the library & the services Shizuku the games machine Tsubasa the games control room Ichika the machine that thinks the Wi-Fi box the house network ๐ŸŸฃ Genkan the front door ยท one login ๐Ÿ“Ÿ The status page what is up, what is down ๐Ÿ“ฑ Your devices the screen you are holding

Tap a box (or press Tab, then Enter). On a small screen, swipe the picture sideways. Nothing on this diagram is a real address โ€” the numbers are deliberately not published anywhere.

Start with Akari

ใ‚ใ‹ใ‚Š โ€” a small light in a dark room

Tap any box on the left and this panel fills in. Start with the biggest machine, then follow the tunnel down to your own screen.

What this means for youNothing to operate. Press play, and it comes.

02Follow one request: โ€œput the film onโ€

What actually happens between your thumb on the remote and the picture moving.

  1. You press play on the television. It is on the house Wi-Fi and asks, by name, for the film.
  2. The name is looked up. That is DNS โ€” the phone book that turns a name into a machine. When it breaks, everything feels offline even when nothing is.
  3. The media room answers. It lives inside Akari, in the datacentre. It reads the film off the big disks.
  4. If your device cannot play that file, it is re-shaped on the fly. That is transcoding โ€” the single most demanding thing the server does. On the television, usually not needed; on an old tablet, often yes.
  5. The picture arrives and plays. Nothing crossed the public internet: it stayed on the house network the whole time.
  6. Away from home, step 3 changes. Your device first steps into the private tunnel, and then the request looks exactly the same as it does at home.

03Why two machines live in a rented room

The good parts

  • Real backup power, air-conditioning, and a proper internet line.
  • Fast enough for the family to stream films from anywhere.
  • Its own block of internet addresses, so the front door has a clean name.
  • It is a business with opening hours, published terms, and a phone number.

The cost

  • A fix is a trip, not a walk. The remote hands on site work office hours only.
  • Off-hours resilience is entirely ours: a machine must be able to restart itself, because nobody is driving there at 2am.
  • Both of our rented machines are in the same building. A fire, a flood, or a power event there takes both at once โ€” which is exactly why an off-site copy of the irreplaceable things stays on the list.