I figure there are some pretty smart IT people on here, so would appreciate the advice
My apartment is wired up with ethernet ports in all the rooms, so I'm looking to create a fast wired network with a Network attached storage (NAS) device at its heart streaming HD video, music, photos etc.. to other devices in the network (TV, PS3, Squeezebox etc..) + a wireless access point for the odd occasion when I use my iPad or laptop on the balcony.
At the moment all I have is an old wireless router (Buffalo AirStation WHR-G54S) in the broom cupboard which is taking the cable internet signal and distributing it via its 4 wired LAN ports to the ethernet ports around the apartment. The wired speed is not great and there is a lot of lag when streaming HD videos. So essentially I'm going to retire it as a router and use it instead as a simple wireless (g) access point.
The question is, what router and NAS should I get? a related question is that I'm getting Swisscom DSL installed this week which comes with its own WLAN router. Can I switch that router for a combined ADSL modem/router for the above mentioned purpose, or should I use the Swisscom one and then distribute its signal with my own router?
Cheers, confused in Basel
That doesn't sound right. Assuming it's 100Mb it's plenty fast enough. Are you sure none of your devices are connecting via wireless?
As someone who's been a professional sysadmin for 15 years or so, I eventually came to the conclusion (after trying a lot of different hardware of greater or lesser expense and complicatedness) that for creating a simple network at home Apple's Airport Extreme routers do everything I need and do it very well. This principle has worked very well for me for the last three generations of the Extreme base station, and I recently stopped using the wireless router that was supplied by Cablecom with my FibrePower 100 connection, switched to the latest (802.11n) version of the Extreme and my life has become better once again. If you can get 5GHz 802.11n adaptors/cards for your endpoints life becomes even better as the Extreme is 5GHz-capable.
The configuration is simple but also powerful - the only drawback is that you have to use Apple's own software to configure it (Windows / Mac only) and there's no web configuration interface. The advantage is that the config software is much, much nicer to use than most cruddy web UIs.
I've tried a lot of things (yes, fellow nerds, I've tried Tomato and DD-WRT on a WRT54-GL as well, and they're good but not for the fainthearted) but ultimately I always keep coming back to the Apple kit. Whether you like Apple or not, or whether you think people who buy Apple kit are scary fanboys or not, the Airport Extreme is a fantastic piece of hardware. Does printer sharing and networks hard disks via the built-in USB port for good measure, and does nice things like allowing you to have a seperate open network for visitors to keep them away from your own stuff. It's just brilliant.
The reviews don't look too promising on the Swisscom WLAN router I'm probably going to get given.
WLAN Router VDSL Analogue- CHF 199
If you want NAS and a media streamer, then take a look at a "media box", you can use it to watch videos on TV and it has a USB port that acts as a NAS as well.
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11484
Are you streaming HD video somewhere from the Internet, or from a local source?
If from the Internet, then the cause of the problem is probably somewhere else.
If the source is in your local LAN then the router you have has 100Mbit Ethernet ports, so, unless its network interface is really slow, it should be enough for HD streaming. Some people report using 54Mbps wireless with good results.
I would try first connecting the local streaming source and receiver directly to see if that works well, before buying a new switch or router.
Yup, I can vouch for that. Swisscom do some really weird lockdown and remote configuration stuff which, at least a year ago, made it a pain in the hole to customise the thing. One thing you can do, though, is switch it into bridging mode so that it just becomes a standard DSL modem and presents the Internet connection on an Ethernet port. Then you can connect a better wireless router to it...
I've disabled wireless on my PS3 and my DLNA media player as both have ethernet ports. What I mean by lag, is that if I fast forward a HD film over the network it either freezes altogether or is really jerky. If I play the same film through a USB drive connected into the media player/PS3 its silky smooth.
Thanks for the tip, the name and a cursory search on Google suggests its strengths are wireless performance, whereas my network will primarily be wired. On the plus side, I've never properly understood the dark arts of networking so something straightforward like this does sound attractive.
We use this router for 2 computer, an iPhone and our TV and it runs smoothly and does everything that I need. Perhaps you need to define what you want your home network to do to give us a better indication of the level of networking you really need.
I watch HD video online and through the TV... on several computers at the same time...
Cheers, in which case I should probably get their more simple ethernet router and save myself 100 francs.
Ethernet Router VDSL Analogue- CHF 99
I'm looking at something similar but with wireless. I current have my desktop connected to my swisscom router (
far right ) by a wireless device. It's a "G" or 54mps device, and I've heard I can't get my full 16ish mb that I could get via ethernet. I'm now looking to get an "N" wifi adapter. My question is, will this make a difference, or is the lack of speed due to the 15 meters distance from the router. My second question is, is the Swisscom router an "N" or a "G" - it doesn't say on the box or online.
Cheers!
edit: Oh, I see my router is a crappy "G". Still, will a faster set of router/wifi dongle make a difference? Surely at 54mbs it's faster than my 20mb connection so it shouldn't make a difference? Or am I totally missing the point in some way.
Oh, and castro, if you want a swisscom wireless router I have one you can have.
I upgraded my home network to gigabit ethernet and it's a huge improvement over 100mbit.
I recommend the simple blue box netgear switches. You can get a good reliable 5 port switch at a cheap price.
I also noticed that the VOIP adapter I had was not very good and was a huge bottleneck so you might want to check that your connection is not going through a non-performing device.
In the end, I take the internet connection into a computer which then connects to the switch. All other devices hang off the switch. This works well for me.
EDIT: if you go down this route, your computer acting as router can also be a NAS saving you from having to buy another box.
If I understand correctly, you can now get reasonably priced gigabit routers which do pretty much the same thing as a seperate switch and a router. I really want to leave my PC out of the equation and instead rely on an always-on NAS as my primary home media server and the router for distributing internet traffic. So my thinking was:
Swisscom ADSL router > gigabit router > 4 or 6 wired outputs (several hardwired to the ports around the apartment, 1 for the NAS drive and one for the wireless access point)
You can maybe try something like this:
http://www.linksysbycisco.com/UK/en/products/WRT610N
I never used it before. I personally don't like consumer grade networking equipment because they usually always have some sort of issue (especially when they are combined wireless products) - whether it's crashing, overheating or needing to be reset every few days.
I'd suggest replacing the Gigabit Router with a Gigabit Switch, at least 4 ports. Having dual routers in the network can lag packet flows especially SIP / VOIP.
Oh, I forgot to mention, to expand on my earlier evangelism the AE base also has three gigabit LAN ports (plus, obviously, one gigabit port for the upstream connection). Whether your home network's cabling can handle gigabit reliably is another question, of course - it depends on how old the cabling is.
And I though I understood the difference between a router and a switch So from the Swisscom router I connect that into a gigabit Switch and everything then connects into the switch?
It was built in 2008, so hopefully the cabling is fairly modern
It's important to remember that the "54Mbps" quoted for IEEE802.11g is kind of a platonic ideal - in an otherwise quiet RF environment, with only two nodes communicating directly with each other, with a following wind, etc, etc, it might possibly get the maximum possible throughput. However, that 54Mbps is without the error-correction overhead that's necessary for a reliable wireless connection, so in reality the maximum throughput is more like 22Mbps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11#802.11g
In theory, 802.11n is capable of 300Mbps throughput, but in real-world terms I'd think of it as a wireless equivalent of 100Mbps copper. It's certainly enough to saturate my FP100 connection from Cablecom.
http://db.tidbits.com/article/8834 is a couple of years old, but still covers the various throughput issues nicely.
This is what my network currently looks like
So we have a cable internet box (that is going soon) feeding the Buffalo router, and that in turn is distributing the signal to the various rooms.
The yellow and green ports are pretty self explanatory, but I have no idea what the black ethernet ports are for on the right of the picture? Could these be the ones for Swisscom?