User:John/FreedomBox/Network architecture

Some notes about fbx network architecture.

Use case

User wants to register their fbx on their existing domain name on their static home IP address

Prerequisites:

• user has a domain name registered (example.com)
• user has DNS hosting and nameservers configured
• user has access to do web based configuration of their DNS settings
  • note: in future we might be able to do for them via API from DNS hosting services

Out of scope:

• no IPv6 configuration yet (we can add later)

Process:

1. tell user to access http://freedombox.local/ (*not* https://freedombox.local/) after booting
   • if not accessible via MDNS and freedombox.local go through nmap discovery or DHCP server status to find IP host such as http://192.168.0.1 or http://10.1.1.1
2. ask the user to tell us thier domain name, e.g. 'example.com'
3. ask user to pick a hostname at their domain, we recommend 'fbx'.
   • note that what we want is one single global unambiguous well-branded hostname for this fbx and something in the form 'fbx.example.com' is ideal
   • note that support for other domain aliases such as 'www.example.com' or 'blog.example.com' etc can be added later at the user's option
4. tell the user to add an A record for 'fbx' for their public IP address.
   • we could offer to auto-detect public IP address

Email

We might use the default RDNS name as the hostname of our mail server and the hostname for our MX records.

Processes

nmap discovery

Help user discover their fbx IPv4 address using an nmap command such as:

nmap -p 80 --open -sV 192.168.0.0/24

DHCP server status

Help user discover their fbx IPv4 address by reviewing the status of their DHCP server (often in the commodity internet router) and looking for 'freedombox' in the hostname or otherwise just trying allocated IP addresses to "see if they work".