The Class E Network

You could statically set the DNS address, while leaving the IP address on automatic (DHCP). (I've done that before, but I forget the reason why...) But if you're there, you might as well do it all.

I can say this much:
I have no idea how much it shortens network connections and interchanges but unbound is fast. After the first name lookup, the next is 0ms (from the OMV server's perspective).

When testing, the DNS bench mark utility shows that local resolution is faster than any server out there. Nothing else is even close.

The way I'm configured is;
The router is the DHCP server and the DNS proxy. The router forwards DNS requests to the Pi-hole/Docker. Pi-hole forwards to unbound, on the OMV host. Even with the local links, lookups are a max of 2 ms.
Faster, more secure, and DNSSEC is forced. It's good stuff.

At the new place, the ISP's ADSL router is locked down as well. There's very little I can change but one item is turning off their Wifi (which I did). With my router behind it, I'm in control again. You know, given where I am now, I'm amazed that I have 15mbs (tested) DSL. I'm 1.5 miles from the nearest paved road which, as luck would have it, happens to be where the telco has their ATM access node.

In any case, if you throw a router behind the Home Hub, things become simple but it would require an investment (OR) maybe it's time to hack the BT home hub!! (Just kidding.)
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Have you heard of Open-WRT? I've been using DD-WRT and Open-WRT for years. (DD-WRT appears to be dormant now, which is a shame. They had a nice user interface.) Open-WRT is still developing images but their interface is very utilitarian. On the other hand, Open-Wrt removes the abstraction found in most router interfaces, revealing the underlying OS where power and flexibility resides.
Using either of the two, one can take older (Ebay items - low cost) but still usable, MIMO, dual band routers, and flash them with a new image that gives them excellent capabilities.

(I found an article for Open-WRT compatible cheap routers, in their forum/community, but I can't seem to find the link again.)

Re-flashed routers and home made yagi's are how I plan to connect my small barn and the cabin. I probably wouldn't need them (the yagi's), but on the knife edge (vertical polarization) they'd stay connected even with obstacles and heavy weather in the path.

RE Hacking the home hub - I like the idea!
Buy one E-bay, flash it to unlock it and,,, it wouldn't work.... ISP's are on to that. You'd have to spoof it's MAC address, other potential and unknown hardware identifiers (a key signature?) AND replicate the current configuration. If you failed in the most minor detail, your ISP might cut you off.
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Setting up pi-hole on an R-PI works, this is a given. **And I just verified that unbound is available for Armbian.**
I'm giving thought to going this route, but I need to get more of my "stuff" over here, at the new place.

The new (old) server is due in on Monday! Again, I gotta get more of my stuff over here.
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A moat and they filled it in? Why? A barrier like that would keep the barbarians out, and would be far better than a lousy home security system. (Imagine the daughter trying to sneak out...)
If they set up yagi's, which are high gain and highly directional, between the main house and the others, the houses farther out would have wireless Ethernet bandwidth.(300meg and up, depending on the AP's used.) With yagi's in place of those little pieces of wire, the line of site range, even for a consumer router, is around 1 to 1.5 miles.
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We have sleet outside now,, a couple inches of it and nightly temperatures in the 20's F. Since daily highs are only getting into the 40's, it might be awhile before this melts off.

Since your Home Hub appears to use a MIMO mesh setup, if you want to take control at some point, the same thing can be done with ASUS AiMesh. Some of the routers that are AiMesh capable, are reasonably priced in the used market, but you'd need 1 each to replace each of the BT hub boxes. And I also noted that the RT-AC86U is supported by Open-Wrt which would extend it's usable life. For mulit-band, MIMO routers, Open-Wrt supports a version of Mesh topology, but it doesn't look like a simple set up.
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We're moving ourselves. I have an 18' car carrier, with a solid bed, and I added stake sides to it. Since we own both houses outright, we can take our time with moving and selling. We'd like to get the other house on the market in late spring of next year, when the market is best for selling.
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Anything related to heat, that is electric, and amperage is going to be up there. Our electric stove, a 4 burner cook top with an integrated oven, has a dedicated 40amp circuit.

As part of the renovation, the very first thing on the schedule was swapping out the power panel. The existing panel was too small and, while still serviceable, something of an antique. (Mainly, I wanted to provision for 2 each 100 amp circuits for the barn and the cabin, on the house panel).

I took the kitchen area down to the wall studs to remove a side door, rearrange the windows (and change the size of the sink window), and expand a utility closet. I used most of the existing wiring, but added a dedicated microwave oven circuit (20 amps), a dedicated refrigerator circuit (20 amps), outlets (20 amps) and switched under cabinet lights on the south counter, and updated the north counter with GFI outlets (they're close to the sink). While the plaster board is off, that's the time to do it the right way.
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While it's cold outside, it's certainly not cold inside. The wood stove we have keeps the interior well over 70F, easily. After I load it up, If I don't choke it down, well ,, it has been up to 80F inside. My wife loves it.

My wife would love to have something like that. (So I won't show it to her.... ) Man, at this point I'm tired of building or, maybe I should say, "customizing". New construction is easy. Retrofitting old construction is a royal (Harry) PITA. Everything is a freaking custom measurement were, a bit of trimming is required here or an adjustment is needed there, to install nearly anything. While I can do it, I'm worn out with all that.

This is what we have: Englander
It's a great catalytic stove that doesn't have a ceramic catalyst to wear out! Catalytic stoves have a secondary burn that burns off wood gas. This stove was designed to set up the re-burn, again, without a catalytic element. (Awesome) In addition to being really efficient, catalytic stoves burn cleaner, without all the soot that accumulates in a chimney. For the most part, after it gets going, all that goes up the chimney is steam. While I do it more frequently (every 2 or 3 years), one could get away with chimney cleaning intervals of 4 to 5 years.

This was yet another "customization" required item. Since I don't trust even insulated double wall stainless pipe (passing through flammable materials on the way to the roof) , I got my brother-in-law to help me build a masonry chimney. After that was done, I reinforced the sub-floor, for the weight, and put in my first tile job on the floor. I pulled the plaster board from the surrounding walls and installed cement board in its place, then I put faux stone (a cement product) over that. So all is nicely fire-proof. A lot of time and effort went into it, but when it comes to fire, safety is the way to go.

Did you install something with a desktop? I think, in this case and with weak hardware, I'd go with a minimal install.

Hum,,, I just noticed that R-PI's are not supported by Armbian. (Which might explain why our good buddy doesn't want to support R-PI's anymore. There would be some work involved in building a usable image, requiring the creation of a truly "preinstalled" image, the way it was done with OMV2 and 3. No semi-automated builds as it is with Armbian.)

Given your experience with Raspbian - I see two possibilities:

1. I think I'll try Diet-PI, which is just an extremely light version of Debian that's optimized for the R-PI. (They claim it's 3X lighter than Raspbian light.) Pi-hole installs on it, natively. An SSH server would be needed (I'd go with OpenSSH so WinSCP is supported). Then the last question to ask would be, will unbound install on the command line?

(If the above doesn't work>)

2. I might start with a OMV3.0.99 build for the R-PI, again Debian, and uninstall openmediavault 3.0.99.
That would free up port 80 for pi-holes purposes and it should provide a base that unbound would install to.

I'll be giving it a try soon - when I collect some more of my "stuff" and get my room in shape.
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I didn't consider the new "Englander" stove to be "posh". (Is it the name? ) After combing through the reviews, everyone seemed to like it and now I have a good idea why. It's fairly easy to get started and it puts out - it's very good for "warming the bum".

I grew up with wood heat and learned a few things in the process. Other than a mesmerizing mood enhancer, if one wants actual "heat", fireplaces are a waste of wood. The old stoves (even the good ones) worked, but they were brute force heating for houses with little to no insulation. One had to practically hug them to get warm,, on one side. Being truly warm was a flipping operation, not unlike flipping a hamburger. Still, thinking about those times, the best sleep I've ever had was in an old cold farmhouse, with 3 quilts and soft blanket. It made one hate getting out of bed in the morning.

My old stove (Energy King 2000c) was designed to either be a fireplace insert or free standing with a pipe adapter. I've been using it for just under 30 years. (At least, during the times when I wasn't overseas which were significant chunks of that period.) It had more of a posh look to it. Unlike the picture in the link, the bay window/door frame in my stove is cast brass. It looks good but it's a PITA to keep it polished and looking good. That one, with a catalyst element that must be replaced every 5 to 10 years, is going to convey with the house.

While it's not as efficient as the new one, it's a double wall stove that draws air in at the bottom and sides, and blows it out of the overhanging lip at the top (You can't actually see the slots in the photo). It has a serious blower in it and the focused heat stream, up close, is awesome. During really cold days in winters past, we used to spread a blanket in front of it and take a nap in the stream of hot air.

You might be interested in this, if you have an R-PI to reuse.

R-PI images collection

More R-PI images, Debian, Ubuntu (current)

Well,, I simply looked at a map, but you followed the route! I know exactly what to do now - thanks for the tips.

Since we're talking about a near zero resources setup, I have an older B+ model I think I'll use for this. (The pi-hole folks say an R-PI zero would do the job for this function.) Of course since I only have the one B+, I'll test the resultant install on the 2B+ to see if it works. I believe in backup.

My only concern would be a folder-to-ram option (the flash-mem plugin, in OMV) to slow down writes to SD-card for longer life. However, given that Diet-Pi is supposedly optimized for platforms that use SD-cards, one would think this has been taken into account.

If that's a non-issue, this is a great use for an R-PI or other SBC. A sort of firmware (solid state), low power, DNS Proxy, ad-blocking appliance, with a local recursive DNS server. I might even use Pi-hole's DHCP server. It's a safe as well, because all if it can be undone in a minute or two, with a couple changes at the router.
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My new/old Intel server arrives on Wednesday. (Estimated) I'm at the old house right now collecting some "stuff", my fast client, and my main OMV server. (I think I'll bring the spare - the Acer RC111, I was using at the new place, back over here.) The drives in the EX470 are going into the Intel Box when it arrives.

I'm giving thought to returning the EX470's BIOS to stock settings and selling it on E-bay. Amazingly, HP EX boxes are selling for $50 and up. One has to wonder what people are doing with them. (A replacement server or parts, for businesses on closed networks?)

Zitat von geaves

TBH never heard of 'Catalytic' wood burners this site explains the functionality which by reading it improves the stoves efficiency, but the price on that site is a bit eye popping

That's the genius behind the Englander design - a catalytic reaction without a ceramic platinum based catalytic element. They have stainless tubes in the top (4 each) with small holes drilled at diameters and angles that vary with each tube. On top of them, there's ceramic fiber boards. The stainless tubes with holes, even without an apparent fuel source, seem to burn wood gas like a burner on a natural gas stove. This link shows the interior view, to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

It's the cleanest burning stove on the market and since that includes catalytic stoves, that's remarkable.
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RE Pi-Hole:

Well,, I simply looked at a map, but you followed the route! I now know exactly what to do now - thanks for the tips.

Since we're talking about a near zero resources setup, I have an older B+ model I think I'll use for this. (The pi-hole folks say an R-PI zero can do the job.) Of course, since I only have the one B+, I'll test the resultant install on a 2B+ to see if it works for backup purposes.

My only concern would be a folder-to-ram option (the flash-mem plugin, in OMV) to slow down writes to SD-card, for longer life. However, given that Diet-Pi is supposedly optimized for platforms that use SD-cards, one would think this has already been taken into account.

If that's a non-issue, this is a great use for an R-PI or other SBC. A sort of firmware (solid state), low power, DNS Proxy, ad-blocking appliance with a local recursive DNS server. I might even use Pi-hole's DHCP server. It's a safe option as well, because backing out if it can be done in a minute or two, with a couple changes at the router.
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My new/old Intel server arrives on Wednesday. (Estimated.) I'm at the old house right now collecting some "stuff", my fast client, and my main OMV server. (I think I'll bring the OMV spare - the Acer RC111, I was using at the new place, back over here.) The drives in the EX470 are going into the Intel Box when it arrives. I'm thinking about getting an SSD and installing ESXi or Proxmox on the Intel server- maybe as winter project, as I'm sure we're going to get snowed in.

I'm also giving thought to returning the EX470's BIOS to stock settings, reinstalling Windows Homeserver, and selling it on E-bay. Amazingly, HP EX boxes are selling for $50 and up. One has to wonder what people are doing with them. (A replacement server, parts, for businesses on closed networks?)

Cached entries are a bit slower, but that's to be expected as the unbound DNS cache is filled. Still, they're not much slower than up-line DNS servers. (Curious - I got no cached results in my test.) Uncached name requests, which is the purpose of unbound, are smokin' fast. What do you think? Are you going to use the setup or test it for awhile?
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I have my fast client at the new place. Wireless - good for laptops but that's about it. I have 130mbs on a wireless adapter to a single band N router. Not bad for internet stuff, but I have some Cat5 wiring to do for the server and fixed client connections.