Hi,
I have recently moved to a new house and I need to design my home’s network. The thing is that I need wired connections inside the dining room in at the first floor as well as inside my office on the second floor. Unfortunately this is a rental house and layout of the rooms is in such a way that I cannot run wires between the two floors.
Here is what I have in each room:
The internet connection is through a medium speed 20 Mbps cable connection. I have the possibility to put the modem in either room. My router is a Dlink DIR-855 802.11n with gigabit ports.
I thought the best place for the NAS is in the office so that it can talk to the desktop computer more quickly when I transfer huge files over gigabit Ethernet. The cable modem and router can also stay in that room so that quality of wireless signal is going to be acceptable in all rooms (the house has 3 floors).
I have two different plans and I’d like you to comment on them:
So what do you think? Powerline or WiFi? Does current PowerLine technology offer comparable speed to 802.11n? How is the delay? What about using a wireless access point to connect two LANs?
Finally, am I missing any obvouse, better solution here?
Thanks,
AlefSin
I have recently moved to a new house and I need to design my home’s network. The thing is that I need wired connections inside the dining room in at the first floor as well as inside my office on the second floor. Unfortunately this is a rental house and layout of the rooms is in such a way that I cannot run wires between the two floors.
Here is what I have in each room:
- Dining room: LCD TV (with DLNA client), Blue-Ray player (LAN access for BD-Live) and Xbox 360 game console.
- Office: Desktop computer, NAS (DLNA server), Printer attached to LAN
- Mobile: Two laptops and two PDAs. Guests may also use WiFi.
The internet connection is through a medium speed 20 Mbps cable connection. I have the possibility to put the modem in either room. My router is a Dlink DIR-855 802.11n with gigabit ports.
I thought the best place for the NAS is in the office so that it can talk to the desktop computer more quickly when I transfer huge files over gigabit Ethernet. The cable modem and router can also stay in that room so that quality of wireless signal is going to be acceptable in all rooms (the house has 3 floors).
I have two different plans and I’d like you to comment on them:
- Plan 1: I can buy a small gigabit switch, put it in the dining room and connect everything to it. Then I can add an 802.11n access-point in that room. Modem and router can move to the room in the second floor and connect devices up with wire.
Pros and cons: using 802.11n should provide enough bandwidth for media streaming and gaming. The downside is that media streaming needs lots bandwidth and having multiple users on the laptops at the same time might make it suffer. The delay for gaming on the console might not be optimal either. Finally, I’ve never used an access point to connect two wired LANs together so I’m not even sure this plan would work.
- Plan 2: After reading the recent review of Belkin’s gigabit PowerLine kit, I thought maybe I can replace the access point in the Plan 1 with a pair of Belkin’s PowerLine adapters.
Pros and cons: my previous experiences with PowerLine products has been less than perfect. They are usually too slow and are sensitive to the noise on the power lines. In home environment noise might come from motors in vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, washing machines, etc. I guess Powerline can potentially have lower delay than 802.11n and also eliminates the bandwidth issues for media streaming when multiple mobile users are working on their laptops.
So what do you think? Powerline or WiFi? Does current PowerLine technology offer comparable speed to 802.11n? How is the delay? What about using a wireless access point to connect two LANs?
Finally, am I missing any obvouse, better solution here?
Thanks,
AlefSin