Building home Network and Storing games on NAS ?

[Illhoon]

Hi i was thinking of building a home server out of my old PC (since i want to build a cool new rig) and connecting a NAS into my home network aswell. Im not terribly good at this stuff but i am very interested in creating a cool Home network. first question would be can anyone recommend me any sources to learn about building my home network? and my next question would be: since i dont really deinstall games or delete Rar files (incase something gets lost) i thought it would be a good idea to store my games (and rar files etc.) on a NAS or my home server and then play games on my new pc but storing them on the Home server or NAS. Would that work ? or is it not recommended 9ve read that loading times could be a issue but the games id play are mostly renpy, rpgm games and sometimes Unity or Unreal games.

 

[anne O'nymous]

first question would be can anyone recommend me any sources to learn about building my home network?

There's many, but most tend to be technical more than didactic ; they assume that you already know everything about networking and LAN (Local Array Network), and just need the commands needed for that particular OS or that particular configuration. By example, they'll obvious all tell you how to "unable" NAT (Network Address Translation), but it's really rare to find one that explain you what NAT is, and therefore why you need it. And of course, none really talk about the implication in term of security.
So, you should probably starts by reading

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. It's really old and out dated (it's an AT&T guide from 1994), so there's now better way to do everything and some advice are now seen as dangerous for good reasons. But in the same time, like it date from the starts of Internet, it explain how it works and why it should works that way. Therefore it should give you the basis knowledge you need before going further.

After you can by example follow that

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, or that

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, unless you prefer

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. You can also goes with NetBSD, but like operating in LAN is one of its main purpose, there isn't really a guide dedicated to gateway.
But a guide, as complete as it can be, will not really be enough. You should use them to identify what you'll need to do and the software you'll need to use, then search for installation/configuration/securing guides for each one of them. And you should also don't hesitate to take all the time you need to understand this, restarting from a fresh install of the OS when it's needed. By building a LAN, you'll build a series of gates to your computers, so being sure that all those gates are effectively closed is really important. It's not too hard to do, but it's also easy to forget something.

[...] then play games on my new pc but storing them on the Home server or NAS. Would that work ?

Strictly speaking, there's no reason for it to not works. While the software aren't located on your computer, they aren't either seen as being remotely located ; it will be like an external hard drive. It's possible that some games still refuse to works that way, but, well, in this case just keep them on your computer.
And speed will not really be an issue. Nowadays computers have a 1 Gbps networks interface, so you'll not really notice the difference. At worse it will feel like if you have a slow hard drive.

 

[Illhoon]

There's many, but most tend to be technical more than didactic ; they assume that you already know everything about networking and LAN (Local Array Network), and just need the commands needed for that particular OS or that particular configuration. By example, they'll obvious all tell you how to "unable" NAT (Network Address Translation), but it's really rare to find one that explain you what NAT is, and therefore why you need it. And of course, none really talk about the implication in term of security.
So, you should probably starts by reading

You must be registered to see the links

. It's really old and out dated (it's an AT&T guide from 1994), so there's now better way to do everything and some advice are now seen as dangerous for good reasons. But in the same time, like it date from the starts of Internet, it explain how it works and why it should works that way. Therefore it should give you the basis knowledge you need before going further.

After you can by example follow that

You must be registered to see the links

, or that

You must be registered to see the links

, unless you prefer

You must be registered to see the links

. You can also goes with NetBSD, but like operating in LAN is one of its main purpose, there isn't really a guide dedicated to gateway.
But a guide, as complete as it can be, will not really be enough. You should use them to identify what you'll need to do and the software you'll need to use, then search for installation/configuration/securing guides for each one of them. And you should also don't hesitate to take all the time you need to understand this, restarting from a fresh install of the OS when it's needed. By building a LAN, you'll build a series of gates to your computers, so being sure that all those gates are effectively closed is really important. It's not too hard to do, but it's also easy to forget something.




Strictly speaking, there's no reason for it to not works. While the software aren't located on your computer, they aren't either seen as being remotely located ; it will be like an external hard drive. It's possible that some games still refuse to works that way, but, well, in this case just keep them on your computer.
And speed will not really be an issue. Nowadays computers have a 1 Gbps networks interface, so you'll not really notice the difference. At worse it will feel like if you have a slow hard drive.

Thank you so much for the answer! i will read through the sources you provide me to learn about home networking. At the moment ill have to wait a just a bit until ill get a good deal for parts so i can finish my new pc build and if thats done i will be going to work at trying to set up my Home server out of my old PC and connecting/building a NAS aswell as configuring my home network. But there is still tons of preperation to do for me in order to do all of this. I have some knowledge about it like setting up and configuring DHCP, DNS etc. aswell as the basic knowledge of how a router works and how routing and subnetting work i just never applyed those things really well in the Real world yet so this will be a big big learning experience and experiment for me (but hey thats why i do it ) i also have Big plans to get a Rasperry Pi to set up network wide Ad block aswell as making my Network Remote controlled acessable by VPN. So alot of stuff to do and learn. Security is also a big point ill have to research about so that i wont fuck up completle haha but as for now i feel like its a very under explained topic when setting up a home lab so yeah ill see what i can do (maybe Chat GPT will be my best friend hehe)

 

[F4C430]

If you want to run the games from the files on the server and not locally, there could be noticeable lag depending on your server hardware and network capability. Another gotcha might be where the save files are located in case you want to be able to use any computer on your network. I did try this once with a Ren'Py game hosted on my RPi server and for me the only lag was in initially loading the game. I was also able to use that same save file from different computers. Your experience may vary.

I have an RPi that i use for

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,

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*,

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, background downloading, and a desktop front-end to a projector for the home theatre experience. I'm considering setting up a

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on it too but i'm not sure if i'll have to suffer with unblockable ads. I highly suggest you just use the RPi for everything and get rid of the old computer. I boot to the SD card and i've attached at least one SSD using

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. I use a powered USB hub to make sure there's enough power for everything. If you get the new RPi 5 then you can directly use an M.2 drive without any adapter.

*Note: In step 4, make a backup before making any changes! The user name and password in step 7 are the ones you'll be prompted for when accessing the shared files.