Geek Stumper

[HiddenMountain]

Hi, brand newby here with a home network question, or ten....

We live off grid in the mountains of BC Canada, generating our power from a small hydro system on our creek. Not tons of electricity (650A @ 12V), but enough to handle the basics. It is inverted to 120V pure sine, then distributed through a regular breaker panel.

This is where the challenges start.... We have two ISP's, Hughesnet satellite and a Line of Sight service. Until a few weeks ago, we had no cell service but that has just been turned on. It's HSPA 3G. We have no connection to that except with our phones, a Motorola Atrix and a Samsung Galaxy.

We have 4 computers (2 towers w/XP a desktop w/XP and a laptop w/W7), a printer, a Linksys E1000 router, a switch and a DVR for CCTV that are loosely tied together in a network. (I say "loosey" because I basically have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to setting up a network!) We had a fellow come up and join our two ISP's together, in what he called his "black screen stuff" using netsh command lines, but he has disappeared. All we have been able to do is try to maintain what he did without really knowing what he did!

I have a few goals that I'd like to achieve here:

1. Get the network established so we can- use the printer from all computers, send files, the usual network stuff.

2. We are going to phase out one of the existing ISP's when their contract runs out this summer, but we are wanting to then hook up to 3G, so we'll still have two ISP's. There are pros and cons to both ISP's that we have now... Hughesnet bandwidth is severely restricted during the day but the pipe is wide open at night, from 11pm to 4am, making watching a simple youtube video almost impossible during the day, which sucks. But, we can watch movies at night, even though it turns us in to night owls, which we are not!

The LOS ISP is ok, but they have us capped at 15 gigs per month, which also sucks. youtube is right out with them anytime but they have a fast enough ping rate for VoIP and sending the video signals from the CCTV... Anyway, one of them is going this summer, not sure which yet.

3. The CCTV. I can see and control it from computers on the LAN now, but am having a heck of a time getting it to work on my Atrix. I've got a dyndns account but for some reason, I can't access port 37777 from "outside". I've called and emailed our LOS ISP, but they haven't replied. (It's a mom and pop operation and something tells me they went to Mexico or something.) Anyway, that is pretty important right now since we have some not-so-nice neighbors who have sticky fingers, (there are jerks everywhere!) and we are going away for holidays sometime soon.

4. Eventually I want to be able to monitor my various systems from my Atrix. Things like -water pressure at the turbine, -air temperature in the powerhouse, -emergency shutoff of valves in the powerhouse, -Amps generated, -Amps used, -household air temperature, -household power being used, -controlling lights from my Atrix, basically home automation. I had some X10 stuff, but it was a major pain so it sits in a box now...

So there you have it. I'm sure there's some details I forgot but that's the gist of it.

We will be so grateful for any help! Thank you! Jon...