Advice Needed For LAN Setup

[Lex Blast]

less gear between your internet port and you servers the better. switches guide everything right. I have bought 32 port switches for fairly cheap.

I mean its router -> switch -> servers. or like someone said buy servers and let someone else do it.

dont do it wrong to save a few bucks because you will lose money in the end when these different pieces of gear start dying.

 

[noellarkin]

But i do have a question. Why are you using so many machines?

Couldnt you sell 10 of them and replace them with 3 stronger ones? Get the same output, but save on space and headache and cables etc.

I get OPs case. I have a 10 year old ThinkPad that works perfectly fine and I use it now as a headless server. Thing runs like an Atom with 2gb ddr3 ram but it works perfectly fine. Yet I couldn't get someone to pay even $30 for it.

Yeah I'm using Thinkpads as well.
@Scorpion Ghost they don't take up much space, they're 12" laptops and I've set up TightVNC (I used to use AnyDesk but TightVNC is so much better and faster) so I access them through my main PC 99% of the time. The main reason I started using laptops instead of getting 2-3 really powerful desktops is because I know someone who runs one of those businesses where they buy up used corporate laptops locally. From time to time, they buy a huge batch of laptops from some corporate office that's getting rid of old machines, and I get a very good deal from these guys to purchase the laptops in bulk before they resell them. It's extremely inexpensive, and I just install a really lightweight stripped windows OS and they're ready to go.
Regarding mouse/keyboard, again, I don't really need that, I'm accessing them through VNC. Don't need any KVM switches either. As I've mentioned before I got a custom perforated metal rack to hold the setup. And these machines are very economical (integrated graphics, low powered processers etc) when it comes to power usage, so my electrical bills don't go through the roof.

Granted, i do like a certain separation of work. This PC does this, that PC does that. Its nice and cozy.

Yeah, this too. And I have fewer issues with concurrency, multithreading, memory leaks between scripts etc. I don't have to switch between a hundred browser instances in the scripts, coding is quick and easy. Basically this factor, coupled with the laptop seller source I have pretty much sealed the deal for me.

 

[Scorpion Ghost]

The 16 laptops likely are too old to salvage any value out of them.

I get OPs case. I have a 10 year old ThinkPad that works perfectly fine and I use it now as a headless server. Thing runs like an Atom with 2gb ddr3 ram but it works perfectly fine. Yet I couldn't get someone to pay even $30 for it.

You would easily get a bunch of machines like this for $400, boot a lightweight os like Puppy Linux or Alpine, hook them up in a network and you now have a small cluster of salvaged computers.

You can't sell them easily, and a modern equivalent will easily cost more than $500.

Yeah I understand that, I have a few old lap tops I still keep in rotation here. Couldn't really sell them for much, but they do get the job done on some things.

Like my oldest lap top, probably over 10 years old, won't even keep running unless it has a cooler under it to keep it cool. It overheats and shuts down

Well I have that lap top at a family member's place working 24/7 (with screen turned off) and I use it with Radmin VPN so that I can have access to their home internet (the IP address, which is what I really need) at my place. It's been working real well for this actually. But this is the only thing I can use the lap top for, as browsing or doing anything else is quite impossible, because it's so slow, plus it shuts down due to overheat. And I'd be lucky to sell it for $xx.

Yeah I'm using Thinkpads as well.
@Scorpion Ghost they don't take up much space, they're 12" laptops and I've set up TightVNC (I used to use AnyDesk but TightVNC is so much better and faster) so I access them through my main PC 99% of the time. The main reason I started using laptops instead of getting 2-3 really powerful desktops is because I know someone who runs one of those businesses where they buy up used corporate laptops locally. From time to time, they buy a huge batch of laptops from some corporate office that's getting rid of old machines, and I get a very good deal from these guys to purchase the laptops in bulk before they resell them. It's extremely inexpensive, and I just install a really lightweight stripped windows OS and they're ready to go.
Regarding mouse/keyboard, again, I don't really need that, I'm accessing them through VNC. Don't need any KVM switches either. As I've mentioned before I got a custom perforated metal rack to hold the setup. And these machines are very economical (integrated graphics, low powered processers etc) when it comes to power usage, so my electrical bills don't go through the roof.

Yeah, this too. And I have fewer issues with concurrency, multithreading, memory leaks between scripts etc. I don't have to switch between a hundred browser instances in the scripts, coding is quick and easy. Basically this factor, coupled with the laptop seller source I have pretty much sealed the deal for me.

Well, you know what you're doing, sounds good to me

VNC? What's VNC? You're not using Anydesk? Please explain

And what's a lightweight stripped OS? I mean, do you strip it yourself or.. where do you get it?

 

[noellarkin]

VNC? What's VNC? You're not using Anydesk? Please explain

for computers on LAN, I've found TightVNC to be a lot more lightweight and better performance-wise compared to anydesk.

And what's a lightweight stripped OS? I mean, do you strip it yourself or.. where do you get it?

Yeah you can strip down windows OSes quite a bit, remove all unnecessary services etc. What you remove and keep depends on use case. There's a win7 ultralight ISO floating around on archive.org (which I've used in the past) as well as a win10 stripped ISO by a guy called Ivan..something (also works, also on archive.org). Alternatively you could remove stuff after install (what I do these days, all those tweakhound guides), or try messing around with the ISO file.

 

[Scorpion Ghost]

for computers on LAN, I've found TightVNC to be a lot more lightweight and better performance-wise compared to anydesk.

Yeah you can strip down windows OSes quite a bit, remove all unnecessary services etc. What you remove and keep depends on use case. There's a win7 ultralight ISO floating around on archive.org (which I've used in the past) as well as a win10 stripped ISO by a guy called Ivan..something (also works, also on archive.org). Alternatively you could remove stuff after install (what I do these days, all those tweakhound guides), or try messing around with the ISO file.

Yeah I tend to do stuff after installing an OS on any of my botting computers. First and foremost disable animations, I think this one gives the biggest boost frankly. And other things, disable indexing, disable some services, I have it all written down.

I've been using Anydesk for years now, never had any problems really other than sometimes it drops connection for no apparent reason. It's not an issue unless I'm copy/pasting a file to a PC which I don't have immediate access to. Then the pasting gets cut and you gotta reconect and start again

Can TightVNC be used to stay open 24/7 and I just connect whenever I want to any machine? And it's free, yeah?

 

[noellarkin]

Can TightVNC be used to stay open 24/7 and I just connect whenever I want to any machine? And it's free, yeah?

yep, free and you can run it as a system service so it stays open 24/7 on all the machines you install it on. As long as the computer's accessible on LAN and you've assigned a static internal IP to it (192.168.0.10 , 0.11, 0.12 etc) you're good to go. Set a dedicated port for it too.

 

[Scorpion Ghost]

yep, free and you can run it as a system service so it stays open 24/7 on all the machines you install it on. As long as the computer's accessible on LAN and you've assigned a static internal IP to it (192.168.0.10 , 0.11, 0.12 etc) you're good to go. Set a dedicated port for it too.

It only works on LAN?

 

[noellarkin]

It only works on LAN?

yeah it doesn't work over internet AFAIK. What I do is, I keep Anydesk on my main computer, and then have TightVNC on all the others. So if I need to access any of the other computers, I do it through Anydesk (to the main computer) then TightVNC to the others. TightVNC is pretty much zero latency (being on LAN and all that, there's no intermediary server like with Anydesk) so it isn't an issue.

 

[Scorpion Ghost]

yeah it doesn't work over internet AFAIK. What I do is, I keep Anydesk on my main computer, and then have TightVNC on all the others. So if I need to access any of the other computers, I do it through Anydesk (to the main computer) then TightVNC to the others. TightVNC is pretty much zero latency (being on LAN and all that, there's no intermediary server like with Anydesk) so it isn't an issue.

I see. Even though I hate using 2 programs for something I can take care of with 1 program, I see your point and it makes sense.

I'll bookmark this thread to remind me when I have some time to check this out, probably switch to it because I would welcome less latency and issues connecting between computers.

I only have 3 computers that aren't here with me where I connect from time to time, but I'll keep anydesk for those.

Good find, cheers