To be fair to her , she may not even be aware she ' s being used <| sep |> My electricity bill for the lab is around $ 45 month . Electricity is fairly cheap where I am . My fiance knows that I use the gear to study and keep uptodate . I keep it all in a small rack in my office , and it ' s not much noisier than a running box fan when you ' re in there , and nearly silent outside of the room . I have a pretty standard cable connection , at 15025 or so . The lab doesn ' t really account for much data transfer . Netflix , YouTube and Steam use far , far more . I use VMUG licensing that I ' ve personally purchased , and MSDN licensing through work for the MS software . I ' m an information security analyst . Having a lab to do redblue security testing is extremely useful . I only bring down the network when my fiance isn ' t using it for Netflix or the like . I get to have maintenance windows , just like a corporate production environment . D I like to manage as much as possible . It ' d be nice to worry about some of the network stuff less , though . My Cisco IOS is a little rusty . It ' s both a means to an end and a hobby . I get to learn and try out stuff that I can ' t do at work for fear of breaking things or that wouldn ' t be authorized except in very special circumstances exploits , mostly .