Friday night topic: Your home empire, err, network

There was a day not long ago when a home network was a small, simple affair involving one to three PCs and perhaps a router. The ubiquity of Wi-Fi and various Internet-connected devices has changed all of that, and now many of us are network admins presiding over a pretty sophisticated mix of devices, from game consoles to entertainment devices to phones.

Personally, I have a home and home-office setup that involves a host of PCs, two VoIP lines, a wireless color laser printer/copier/fax/scanner, a bevy of netbooks and notebooks, at least one smart phone, a Wii, an HTPC, and... wow. Other stuff, too, I believe. My router is a spiffy Netgear dual-band model with multiple radios, and we have well over a terabyte of online storage, with mirroring and weekly backups.