Network Question - Gigabite upgrade

[bgoodbody]

I now have a gigabit port on my internet Service and was considering an upgrade to my home network. Tim's reviews and others comments point to the Netgear WNDR3700 as a good choice for wireless.

My problem is, I need more than 4 ports for my local network devices, and for me Internet comes into and is distrubuted through the basement.

Ideally, I would have an 8 port wired gateway with a seperate Wireless access point which I would put higher in the house for better coverage, but there don't seem to be any 8-port gigabit wired gateways.

Another option (2 years down the raod) may be a 2nd ISP option for failover and/or agregation

I would appreciate any advice, suggestions and equipment recomendations.

- Bill

 

[thiggins]

Just uplink a gigabit switch to the router.

 

[bgoodbody]

The disadvantage of this approach is it requires the router to be in the basement.

 

[thiggins]

The disadvantage of this approach is it requires the router to be in the basement.

Didn't you just say that you would put a wired router in the basement and an AP / router converted to AP someplace else?

Another alternative is to run two cables to the router location. One from the ISP modem to the router WAN port and the second from a router LAN port to the basement switch.

 

[bgoodbody]

I suppose the least expensive would be to try the router in the basement (that is where I have a Linksys WRT54gv5 now). & hope that coverage is adeqaute or better, since I don't have a 2 cable run in place.

If that works, then I could add a switch (Netgear GS608?) to give the additional ports that I need.

If not, then I would need to do the 2 cable run to get the wireless coverage I need.

I guess at the moment there aren't any good, high throughput, lower cost wired gigabit 8-port gateways?

Thanks, Bill

 

[msl]

Just think of a router + 8-port gigabit switch as an 8-port gigabit router, except more flexible and cheaper.

It sounds like you want to buy an 8-port gigabit switch to supplement your router (effectively converting the router into an 8-port gigabit router), exactly as Tim suggests. If wireless coverage is an issue you can still add an additional wireless access point to your network at a strategic location.