How is your home network designed?

chev65 · 18 Oct 2010

FliGi7 said:

I was considering using a Linksys WRT54GL as my main router. Then I could put a hub right behind it for the connections to all rooms, or just route the 4 ports to 4 diff rooms of the house and then put a hub/switch at each of those as necessary.

That router has limited specs and is outdated by todays standards.

I highly recommend you go with a router that has Gigabyte LAN and WAN with wireless N, they don't cost much more and won't be limiting your file transfers and connection speeds like the 54Mbps wireless G router will. If you go that route also get switches that are gigabyte capible.

As for the switch locations and wires. For the longest runs try going with just one eithernet wire with a switch at the end of the run then divide up the shorter runs from the switch to the other rooms. I would really need a floor plan of the house to give you the best possible lay out.

FliGi7 · 18 Oct 2010

I've heard and seen good things about TP-Link and they happen to have a Gigabit Wireless B/G/N router I was also considering. I am just unsure if DD-WRT can be flashed onto it at the moment.

chev65 · 18 Oct 2010

Those look ok but... I don't see them with Gigabyte LAN which is a big one for me. They seem to be limited to 10/100 LAN rather than todays standard 10/100/1000 LAN which pretty much all PC's have these days, or maybe I just can't find the gigabyte version?

ok found it I think, looks a lot like my D-link Dir-655 but costs less which is good.

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/SKUSearch...etitle=TP-LINK

FliGi7 · 18 Oct 2010

Yep, that's the one.

Phone Man · 18 Oct 2010

I have a rather simple setup. I have 12Mb cable with a SB6120 modem. It feeds a D-Link DGL-4100 router with 4 GigE Lan ports. My main PC is in the same room and has Cat5e to the router. Also have my Vonage box run to the router. I then feed a Powerline device to the other room for the wife's laptop. Had too many problems with WiFi so went with Powerline. I recently bought a Brother laser printer with Lan connection but use it on the main PC via usb, but plan to try and hook it to the router to network it. Nothing fancy but works great so far. In my other life I did a lot of network setups with my job so now I keep it simple.

Jim

zzz2496 · 18 Oct 2010

A reminder, network gears measures in bits not bytes, the difference is eight fold... 1 byte = 8 bits. A GigE interface can transfer as much as 90 MBytes to 95 MBytes per second (with good NIC that has ToE).

zzz2496

LiquidSnak · 18 Oct 2010

Cable >modem >Dlink gaming router >in wall switch >wall ports throughout the house (two xbox360's, a Ps3, 3 laptops, 5 desktops...)

pparks1 · 19 Oct 2010

My setup is pretty straight forward and simple. Cable modem plugs into my Linksys WRT54GL wireless router. Wireless router plugs into a 16 port Netgear 10/100 switch that I keep in my back room for testing. My file server is connected directly into that switch From that switch, I uplink to 2 different 5 port 10/100 Linksys switches (one on my desk) and another upstairs in my living room. On my switch on my desk, I plug in my Win7 box, and my Linux box. On the switch in my living room, I attach to my Xbox360 and my BluRay player. My laptop and my wife's laptop connect via wireless at 54g....and my Droid and her iPhone connect to our wireless as well. oh yeah, our kid's Wii also connects to wireless.

I don't monitor my internal home network.

jayun · 19 Oct 2010

I have a little enviroment at home I play around with...

WRT54GL (The Linux version, old school) - Wireless, DHCP for wireless - limited #

8PT gigabit (servers), 2 PC's
16PT 10/100 (junk, 2nd NIC's in servers)

Wired systems all have manually assigned IP's

Server 2008 Ent. - Domain Controller, DNS, WSUS
Server 2008 R2 Ent. - File server (4TB), Remote Desktop Services/RD WebApps
Server 2008 Ent. - Sandbox, MS server stuff
Windows 7 - Sandbox/remote access/Backup GFI +Mozy

This is a picture from a few years back. It basically still looks like this, except all the computers are cleaned up and have newer parts.