It is indeed or sometimes known as a banana spider. There was one living in the middle of a huge web it had made across a whole car port in an empty house a few doors down from where I used to live in Taiwan. Gave me the creeps every time I rode past it. It was twice as big as that one in the picture too. Harmless apparently but I was always too chicken to find out.
They are harmless.
The one we had living in our porch was a baby when I first saw it. I used to feed it assasin bugs and stuff though. It was huge by the time I moved back to UK.
Our cat had a fascination with the babboon spiders too. Lovely grey spiders. Nasty bite supposedly. I did catch one that Megan had cornered and it bit me but did it gently so as not to peirce the skin. But just seemed to be a warning.
The Camel spiders are horrible though. I’m fine with most big spiders but house spiders and the Camel spiders really freak me out.