I Let Claude Build My Home Network: Two ISPs Bonded, $312/Year Saved (opens in new tab)

(jonathanclark.com)

15 pointsjclarkcom4mo ago31 comments

31 comments

AI clearly wrote the blog post too - it's a neat project but the "ai style of writing" really doesn't work well for a long form article. It's like a collection of listicles.

I think it'd be a better presentation to use more prose and fewer bullet points - I'm more interested in the human experience than the machine experience here!

q3k4mo ago

It's a lot of words that basically say nothing. There's no substance there - eg. no info on how the setup works (how, if at all, do they integrate MPTCP?). Just endless bullet points repeating themselves.

EgregiousCube4mo ago

Absolutely. The reason I clicked in the first place was to see if there was an elegant MPTCP implementation.

sema4hacker4mo ago

To save money, I would have just switched to ATT fiber like you did, drop Xfinity completely, and try that for awhile. It's worked for me for years, and my only downtime has been a few times during winter storms when the power goes out completely.

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

nice. I wish fiber was available for me. I only had access to AT&T's copper service (DSL) but they do 2-pair bonding so speed is not far from Xfinity.

dfajgljsldkjag4mo ago

Your AI slop said you have fiber, so maybe you should try to actually read it instead of having us catch your lies.

> 1. Downgraded Xfinity from $90/mo to a basic $50/mo plan (still usable speeds, just lower tier)

> 2. Added AT&T Fiber as a second line at $55/mo (different infrastructure = different failure modes)

> 3. Bonded both connections using WireGuard VPN and OpenWRT routing

Edit:

Another lie detected: ATT isn't accepting new customers on DSL, and is in fact yanking service for existing customers in many areas. So there's zero chance that OP signed up for ATT copper internet within the last year or so.

https://www.att.com/internet/dsl/

1 more reply

kundi4mo ago

You completely neglected the egress cost for DO, and also the time / maintenance needed, which makes this a poorly engineered fantasy

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

Harsh, but a good point on egress cost that I overlooked, I'm adding a section on this - if you use Oracle cloud it looks like you get 10TB included at no additional cost where DO would be around $84 at the same bandwidth levels

kemotep4mo ago

It would be cool if the output that that the LLM made (commands it ran to harden, the iptables, MPTCP config, etc.) was included in the post.

It seems incredulous that this didn’t take dozens of back and forth prompts and fixes. It was able to one-shot deploying a digital ocean droplet and configure wireguard?

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

Here are some of the commands it used (censored & auto-generated) with a few specific examples at the end: https://jonathanclark.com/posts/bonded-internet-connection-c...

> It was able to one-shot deploying a digital ocean droplet and configure wireguard?

Yes, that part was pretty easy - but the whole thing wasn't one shot. The parts I struggled with were: - getting automated SSH installed on the $130 router, once you have that the LLM can drive things - during security hardening, I got fully locked out and had to recreate a new VM. But it was able to automatically recreate everything in a few minutes.

kemotep4mo ago

Thanks for sharing. Just looking over this it seems to spend some time creating ufw rules and then deletes them all and disables ufw. Is that accurate or is this just the output and you had to copy and paste in?

I am assuming all the missing steps is just the information you censored.

satertek4mo ago

My first concern would be using a digital ocean droplet as a VPN. Last time I tried that, datacenter IP ranges often made things slower or unusable.

woleium4mo ago

this. the cameras are not the only thing that won’t work

you could use an azure VDI machine as a cloud endpoint, i believe those ips are flagged correctly. It’s not this cheap though.

damieng4mo ago

I also went with an Xfinity cable and Frontier fibre combo in about 2018 I think.

I just bought a Synology RT2600 router at the time and plugged each provider in then set it to load balanced.

Reliability and speeds were great. Possibly not as optimised as this perf wise but a lot easier to setup.

phillipseamore4mo ago

Looks like this proposed a solution that costs about the same as the mentioned Speedify (more expensive at the moment because of blackfriday deals) but lacks all the features and is more likely to break.

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

Bonding two ISPs was previously too complex for most home use until agentic AI. Claude can automate the entire WireGuard/OpenWRT/VPN setup, testing, and security hardening via SSH as an afternoon project. Total cost: $305 over 3 years vs $1,241 for commercial solutions. Downgrade your current ISP and add a second cheap one to get faster more reliable internet at home.

nickphx4mo ago

yeaaaaaah .. something the llm didn't explain is how asymmetric bandwidth or latency between the connections will degrade performance... or how many services like streaming, banking, gaming will restrict, block, or otherwise treat the connection differently because the traffic now exits via a datacenter or VPN IP/ASN..

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

> or how many services like streaming, banking, gaming will restrict, block, or otherwise treat the connection differently because the traffic now exits via a datacenter or VPN IP/ASN.

I did run into this and claude implemented a work-around (see step 8) to route some traffic through the normal exit IP for those special use cases. So far I've only run into this problem with 3 services (Ring, Blink, and Paychex). Surprisingly none of the streaming services seem to care (Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV).

jfernandezr4mo ago

Also the DigitalOcean deoplet includes 500GB per month, which for me is absolutely limited. Last month I consumed about 10TB.

1 more reply

nickphx4mo ago

oh boy, how amazing... an llm managed to generate some iptables rules and sysctl settings that have been well documented for years..

shermantanktop4mo ago

If you are starting from relative ignorance about the topic, then yes, it is amazing.

But it does mean that the user can build a solution that they don’t understand well enough to maintain.

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

I've experimented with using LLM to setup and/or maintain some servers for me for various different use cases (this being one). What I like is an agentic LLM can either document it's initial build process or "explore" your server to better understand how it works, what configuration files are used, software versions installed, etc. When you have that documentation/context provided to a frontier LLM it can take care of most maintenance work you'd like do by hand for "simple" servers. A good prompt to get an llm to explore an existing server to make sure it fully understands it is to ask it to make a working backup.

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nickphx4mo ago

indeed.

mattbee4mo ago

And a really dreary blog describing something simple at great length :/

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

Maybe I didn't make it clear from the post, the llm (cursor+claude 4.5 sonet) was actually driving the whole process from provisioning a server, installing wireguard, setting up certificates, configuring network, installing packages, and updating security - with some testing at each step. I never ran any commands manually, I just told it what to do.

ctoth4mo ago

And Dropbox is an afternoon project for any Linux user, right? Right?

nickphx4mo ago

If you believe the two are similar in complexity and effort, you have much to learn.

1 more reply

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31 comments

EgregiousCube4mo ago

AI clearly wrote the blog post too - it's a neat project but the "ai style of writing" really doesn't work well for a long form article. It's like a collection of listicles.

I think it'd be a better presentation to use more prose and fewer bullet points - I'm more interested in the human experience than the machine experience here!

q3k4mo ago

EgregiousCube4mo ago

Absolutely. The reason I clicked in the first place was to see if there was an elegant MPTCP implementation.

sema4hacker4mo ago

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

nice. I wish fiber was available for me. I only had access to AT&T's copper service (DSL) but they do 2-pair bonding so speed is not far from Xfinity.

dfajgljsldkjag4mo ago

Your AI slop said you have fiber, so maybe you should try to actually read it instead of having us catch your lies.

> 1. Downgraded Xfinity from $90/mo to a basic $50/mo plan (still usable speeds, just lower tier)

> 2. Added AT&T Fiber as a second line at $55/mo (different infrastructure = different failure modes)

> 3. Bonded both connections using WireGuard VPN and OpenWRT routing

Edit:

https://www.att.com/internet/dsl/

1 more reply

kundi4mo ago

You completely neglected the egress cost for DO, and also the time / maintenance needed, which makes this a poorly engineered fantasy

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

kemotep4mo ago

It would be cool if the output that that the LLM made (commands it ran to harden, the iptables, MPTCP config, etc.) was included in the post.

It seems incredulous that this didn’t take dozens of back and forth prompts and fixes. It was able to one-shot deploying a digital ocean droplet and configure wireguard?

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

Here are some of the commands it used (censored & auto-generated) with a few specific examples at the end: https://jonathanclark.com/posts/bonded-internet-connection-c...

> It was able to one-shot deploying a digital ocean droplet and configure wireguard?

kemotep4mo ago

I am assuming all the missing steps is just the information you censored.

satertek4mo ago

My first concern would be using a digital ocean droplet as a VPN. Last time I tried that, datacenter IP ranges often made things slower or unusable.

woleium4mo ago

this. the cameras are not the only thing that won’t work

you could use an azure VDI machine as a cloud endpoint, i believe those ips are flagged correctly. It’s not this cheap though.

damieng4mo ago

I also went with an Xfinity cable and Frontier fibre combo in about 2018 I think.

I just bought a Synology RT2600 router at the time and plugged each provider in then set it to load balanced.

Reliability and speeds were great. Possibly not as optimised as this perf wise but a lot easier to setup.

phillipseamore4mo ago

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

nickphx4mo ago

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

> or how many services like streaming, banking, gaming will restrict, block, or otherwise treat the connection differently because the traffic now exits via a datacenter or VPN IP/ASN.

jfernandezr4mo ago

Also the DigitalOcean deoplet includes 500GB per month, which for me is absolutely limited. Last month I consumed about 10TB.

1 more reply

nickphx4mo ago

oh boy, how amazing... an llm managed to generate some iptables rules and sysctl settings that have been well documented for years..

shermantanktop4mo ago

If you are starting from relative ignorance about the topic, then yes, it is amazing.

But it does mean that the user can build a solution that they don’t understand well enough to maintain.

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

1 more reply

nickphx4mo ago

indeed.

mattbee4mo ago

And a really dreary blog describing something simple at great length :/

jclarkcomOP4mo ago

ctoth4mo ago

And Dropbox is an afternoon project for any Linux user, right? Right?

nickphx4mo ago

If you believe the two are similar in complexity and effort, you have much to learn.

1 more reply

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