Help with home office network re-do

[RWlodarczyk]

I've been researching this for the past few days, and unfortunately not made too much progress. It seems the ideal products that I need do not exist! Here's what I'm looking to setup to upgrade my current home office network. (which currently is too slow for large file transfers (ie: HD Video shot with Canon 5D Mark II, many RAW files, huge image catalogs))

- Router with VPN, preferable gigabit with jumbo frame support. One port would be ideal, but 4 ports is ok. I need the VPN since my NAS will rsync over VPN to a second family household. The second household will have the same router and NAS.

- Switch with 16 or 24 ports, gigabit with jumbo frame support. Yes, I need this many ports, since I have 8 ethernet jacks in my house, then I will directly connect to this a NAS with 2 ethernet cable for load balancing, wireless AP, Vonage device, and uplink to router. By my count, I need 13 ports.

- Wireless AP supporting 802.11 a/b/g/n. Supports PoE, or a device that will work with something like a Netgear POE101 or DLINK DWL-200.


My house is on 4 stories. The switch, router, NAS will be in the garage in a self made network room. Currently all my cabling for the house goes down there and fiber is deliver into the garage from the community. So, I cannot put a WLAN AP down there, otherwise I would get no connectivity upstairs. Alternatively I can put one down there, but then a repeater on a higher floor. However, if I can avoid that by placing just one AP on the second or third floor, that would be great.

At the moment I have a Linksys 10/100 router, with an additional Linksys 10/100 switch. I have a Buffalo Tech router AP, with the router portion disabled. Since this is on the second floor now, on the fourth floor I get some signal, but very weak.

The NAS will be a Netgear ReadyNAS NVX or QNAP TS-439 PRO or Drobo with DroboShare (suggestions on which to select here are also welcome).

Cost is a factor. For the router, I don't want to spend more than $150ish (since I will need to buy 2 of them). The switch can be up to $200. The WLAN solution can be $300ish. If the whole thing can be done for $500 to $600 that would be wonderful.

I'd appreciate any help or suggestions that folks may have.

 

[RWlodarczyk]

redo of home network

I'm breaking up one of my earlier posts into multiple posts:

I've been researching this for the past few days, and unfortunately not made too much progress. It seems the ideal products that I need do not exist! Here's what I'm looking to setup to upgrade my current home office network. (which currently is too slow for large file transfers (ie: HD Video shot with Canon 5D Mark II, many RAW files, huge image catalogs))

- Router with VPN, preferable gigabit with jumbo frame support. One port would be ideal, but 4 ports is ok. I need the VPN since my NAS will rsync over VPN to a second family household. The second household will have a VPN router and NAS.

Cost is a factor. For the router, I don't want to spend more than $150ish (since I will need to buy 2 of them). The switch can be up to $200. The WLAN solution can be $300ish. If the whole thing can be done for $500 to $600 that would be wonderful.

I'd appreciate any help or suggestions that folks may have.

 

[thiggins]

Please don't post the same request in multiple forums. The duplicate posts have been removed.

First, the router doesn't need Gigabit ports unless your Internet connection box does and your Internet speed is > 100 Mbps.

For a unmanaged gigabit switch, you can buy based on price, brand preference and warranty. There is no performance difference among products.

For VPN router, look at Cisco RV042. It's generally well-regarded.

Sorry, but I don't understand your wireless coverage needs. A diagram would be helpful.

 

[RWlodarczyk]

Thanks for the reply, and sorry for the forum abuse.

For wireless here's a rough diagram:

+-----------------------------+
| home office 2 | floor 3
+-----------------------------+
| bedrooms, home office 1 | floor 2
+-----------------------------+
| kitchen w/ wireless ap | floor 1
+-----------------------------+
| garage w/ wiring closet | floor 0
+-----------------------------+

So, with the WAP in the kitchen today, I get very poor signal on floor 3 and on floor 0; great coverage on floor 1 and 2. If I put an AP in the garage, I won't get coverage on floor 2 or 3.

 

[thiggins]

It sounds like you are not going to get the desired wireless coverage with a single AP. I recommend a second AP, connected via Ethernet vs. a repeater.
You can convert any wireless router to an AP and add it into the network.