I have spent the last couple of months downsizing our home to just an Ubuntu and Macbook laptop for me and Windows laptop for my wife. We also have a fast desktop for everything not covered by the others, but it sits silent most of the time. Let's not forget the iPads and the Playstation 3. The iPads we use for general Web browsing, ebooks and watching Netflix. My iPad has a Guizm OpenVPN client, along with VNC and SSH clients. That PS3 does nothing but get updates all the time, but it is useful for a little gaming. It's actually a pleasure to use, now that it isn't on a network. The main reason we decided to make the change is to simplify our home life. Both of us stare at computers all day at work already. <div>
<br></div><div>Our home Internet and TV services were canceled last month. We take walks at night; however, we haven't reverted back to the Stone Age. My wife has Clear service from the office and I have Sprint MIFI service for my laptop and my iPad. We are waiting on USB over WiFi to get the printers in with the program. Bluetooth works now but it is slow. What a relief it has been to not have to worry about maintaining a physical network at home. No more cursing at that damn router whenever visitors come over with their laptops and phones. It's always my wireless network that's the problem, never their POS devices. Even better, my cheap neighbor can no longer mooch off of our connection.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The only problem for me is the hassle that I have to go through to quickly test out things that require a network. There is always the work network, but I don't like to mess with that. I was thinking it would be nice to have a private network in the Cloud. I know Linode gives public and private IPs that might work. If I could set up a small Linode box to act as a VPN gateway, I should be able to get other private virtual boxes on that same network without having to maintain physical assets. When I don't need the network anymore, I simply shut it down and go on about my business. Linode even has scripts to get the boxes back a certain way if I need to. Am I shooting myself in the foot here?</div>