advice for mixed wired/wireless home network with interferring baby monitors

[ckc]

First of all, I just discovered this site and I want to thank you for all the reviews, advice etc., it has been very interesting reading over the last few days. I am in the process of upgrading my home network and would really appreciate any advice.

Current setup,
Internet connection: Cablemodem, 13mb down/300kb up
1 WAN/LAN router: WRT54G running dd-wrt in mixed mode (b/g)
1 PC connected to WRT54G (via wired)
1 Apple airport express for streaming itunes via wds
2 cellphones with wifi (iphone and curve)

I just recently purchased a macbook pro and am planning on adding another pc/nas/fileserver (leaning towards a DIY MSI wind setup based on your articles) to house media (music, photos, videos). I do a lot of photography work and video editing, hence the macbook purchase, and a lot of videos that I work with are very large. I plan on working on the photos/videos locally on the macbook harddisk and dumping them onto the fileserver for backups and so the PC can access them too.

Our house is prewired with I believe cat5e, so I plan on plugging the macbook into the LAN for transferring large files. I would like to upgrade the LAN to gigabit but I have been reading that some dlink switches do not go faster than 100mbit with cat5e cabling over 15ft. And if I continue to use the WRT54G as my internet gateway, some gigabit switches drop all ports to 100 speed instead of 1000 if any one port is at 100. That would nullify the purchase of a gigabit switch, if this true?

So if the gigabit switch will indeed function at 1000baseT with my setup, it seems my options right now are to:

1. Buy a gigabit switch and run the LAN on that and continue to use the WRT54G as the WAP. (cheapest option)
2. Buy a new draft-n wireless router that supports gigabit LAN. Convert the old WRT54G to an access point to support the WDS itunes streaming and cellphone wifi. Use the new router in 'n' mode only for the macbook.

It seems to me the first option is the most economical and performance wise not very different than option 2 because I'm limited to my internet speed anyways for internet traffic. Am I missing something here that the new draft-n routers will provide other than a slightly faster WAN speed? How much faster is that and is it worth it?

One final wrench to throw into the equation is, there are a ton of new babies on our block (including our house ), hence a lot baby monitors that are giving me all kinds of problems with my wifi. Since they operate at 2.4ghz, would buying a router that supports 5ghz help? And would that only help draft-n devices (hence only the macbook)? Is there anything else that can be done to mitigate the interference?

Sorry for the lengthy post, but I would appreciate any advice!

 

[thiggins]

Our house is prewired with I believe cat5e, so I plan on plugging the macbook into the LAN for transferring large files. I would like to upgrade the LAN to gigabit but I have been reading that some dlink switches do not go faster than 100mbit with cat5e cabling over 15ft.

CAT 5e is fine for Gigabit Ethernet if installed properly (no sharp bends/ kinks and tidy terminations in 5e rated jacks.

And if I continue to use the WRT54G as my internet gateway, some gigabit switches drop all ports to 100 speed instead of 1000 if any one port is at 100. That would nullify the purchase of a gigabit switch, if this true?

This is not the case. A properly functioning 10/100/1000 switch will support full speed of each link pair. It could be that you are reading / hearing about problems due to Flow Control. See When Flow Control is not a Good Thing.

1. Buy a gigabit switch and run the LAN on that and continue to use the WRT54G as the WAP. (cheapest option)
2. Buy a new draft-n wireless router that supports gigabit LAN. Convert the old WRT54G to an access point to support the WDS itunes streaming and cellphone wifi. Use the new router in 'n' mode only for the macbook.

Your option 1 is fine as long as you are happy with your wireless speeds. You only need separate G and N networks if you have heavy traffic with both types of devices.

One final wrench to throw into the equation is, there are a ton of new babies on our block (including our house ), hence a lot baby monitors that are giving me all kinds of problems with my wifi. Since they operate at 2.4ghz, would buying a router that supports 5ghz help? And would that only help draft-n devices (hence only the macbook)? Is there anything else that can be done to mitigate the interference?

If you have heavy 2.4 GHz interference, your options are to move to the 5 GHz band and get rid of the interference (switch to a non 2.4GHz baby monitor, DECT 6.0 phones instead of 2.4 / 5 GHz, etc.). 5 GHz draft N routers also support 802.11a, which is the older 5 GHz standard. So if you have any devices that support a/b/g, they will also work with a 5 Ghz a/b/g/n router.