[sudo-sys] New router for Omni

[Marc Juul]

I ordered a new router for Omni with sudo mesh funds.

It is a small low power (~8 W) AMD system with 4 gigabit ethernet ports:

https://www.pcengines.ch/apu4d4.htm

I also ordered a 240 GB SSD and an appropriate case for it.

Daniel is donating more gigabit PoE routers so we can replace the broken
one and the one that's still running (but at least one fan is broken), I'm
coordinating with Jake to go pick them up. We are actually getting a tall
stack of these

I met up with Alex at the Omni and we went over how we should improve the
current infrastructure.  We decided that it makes sense to use VLANs
instead of separate LANS and to get two more passively cooled lower power
gigabit ethernet rackmount switches. One will live in the main rack and
take care of all non-PoE routing for Omni. We can then put that switch and
the new main router on the rackmount UPS that Alex donated and we can
connect the VDSL modem and a single access point to that UPS as well. That
way there will at least be wifi in sudo room during a power outage. If we
tried to run the PoE switch and thus all the wifi access points, from the
UPS then it would not last long. Since we're switching to VLAN we will only
need one PoE switch and one regular switch in the rack but we are planning
to install another PoE switch that will be powered off but configured
identically since we'll get plenty of them for free.

The other passively cooled ethernet switch will replace the very noisy one
outside the Omni office.

We need to find VLAN capable affordable passively cooled switches with 24
ports (or more) that can handle the temperatures we get (I'd say 45 C
ambient as an estimate).

Some of us (Alex, Jake, Keenan and myself) have also been scheming on
expanded door access control. I'll have an update on that soon. It looks
like I'm handling the replacement for sudo humans and have been researching
and trying different solutions. So far I'm leaning toward adding
functionality to MemberMatters from the Brisbane hackerspace. Some research
is here:

https://sudoroom.org/wiki/List_of_existing_hackerspace_access_control_software

We're also looking at options for upgrading our wifi as we look toward a
future where Omni has a gigabit ethernet connection. Again we've been
trying different solutions and I'll send an update soon.

Does anyone have any feedback or reasons why we should do any of this
differently?

-- 
marc/juul
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