Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

[RONDAL]

Moving soon, want to ditch all the wires on my media stuff and go as wireless as possible...want a way for everything to interconnect quickly and easily and get good speeds.

Personal Computer - quad core monster w/ W7
GF's computer - my old beater w/ XP
HTPC - 4TB of HD space hooked up to TV w/ XP
Xbox with stock 20gb hard drive

All of the above are hardwired using long ethernet cord to my linksys WRT54G router.

I also have
Work laptop - currently wirelessly connect via B
GF's work laptop - currently wirelessly connected via B

I want to go full standalone wireless and still maintain the speeds i am used to wired, or possibly increase them.
Building is cement, with other sources of wireless, but the space i am dealing with is just over 1000sq/ft single floor.

Currently I download all of my media content on my personal computer because i am at it a lot, then simply move it across to my HTPC over the network. Its decently quick. I could download straight to the HTPC but i hate surfing the net on the TV. All clear as it is, its still easier just to get it all done from my personal computer.

What I'm thinking is doing a full scale swap of everything to N so i get N speeds throughout.

Have this as the centre hub, Linksys/Cisco WRT610N
http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WRT610N

It would allow me to connect my enormous 2TB external usb harddrive that i store most of my media on, to the network, and have that available easily to all connecting computers.

I would then place these into all of the desktop computers we have;
http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WMP600N

And buy two of these to do the work laptops
http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WUSB600N

I would then get the Xbox wireless N adapter, plug it in and go on my merry way.

w7 is good at working backwards with XP to get the full media capability. The biggest thing, which i have working currently is the personal computer and the HTPC. Obviously figuring out how to get the xbox into the mix would be good, though I hate how loud it is. I still have an old (replaced twice) white one.


Thoughts

[RONDAL]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

other thing would be replace the xbox and HTPC wireless N card and adapter with this
http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WET610N

and just hardwire them in in the AV cabinet. They are going to be about 2 feet apart in a cabinet so wiring in the back of them isn't the end of the world

[popp]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

I would just sell it all!


And buy an iPad.................. You'd be set! Chris, step in please.

[Vulcan]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

I just bought the Linksys WRT610N Wireless Router on Saturday....Very nice unit with the dual radios (2.4 and 5 Ghz). So far it has been rock solid and it was easy to setup (I didn't use the lame Network Magic software that comes with it. I have not tried the usb hard drive option yet as I run a Windows Home Server for my data storage.

[Tuna]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

Ok, I didn't read all that, sounds like you want a Wireless N router with Wireless cards for your Desktops/Towers.

But as for media downloading, instead of downloading to your laptop and transfering it via network why not RDP in to your HTPC and download it straight to it? Just keep a window open for your RDP session?

Another option is to get an NAS and store all your media there, they have built in RAID so it's all backed up.

[RONDAL]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

i could set up a RDP, i could also simply create a folder on the network which i save my torrent files to from the office desktop that is actually located on the HTPC. Was kind of the point of the storage hooked up directly to the router.

as for an ipad.....the misses already wants one....so its not far out

[Stonewall]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

Just make sure she isn't late while on her ipad, that would spell all types of problems for your budget.

[Benjamin]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

Hopefully you are not just going to throw out that linksys router. I picked one up not to long ago and threw on dd-wrt for the firware and can't be happier.
Before you make the jump to n make sure its really worth it.

I got a NAS from synology a few weeks ago and honestly the best investment for a media center. Runs a bittorrent for the media, stores the files and streams a media server for the xbox. I have a few blueray quality downloads and through my wireless g and laptop they play fine. The load time not instant, takes 10 seconds.

For media streaming one feed you could probably get away with g, more then one I would go with n.

Highly recommend the NAS as it is built to share files and optomized for it so speeds will probably be a little better then just off a random computer.

Good luck let use know what you got.
Ben

[RONDAL]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

the reason for going N is everything i have in media is 720p or higher quality. This means large files. If you try shoving a 1080p video across a G network it is painfully slow.

54mbit/sec on G vs 600mbit/sec on N.

[RONDAL]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

Jason what type of NAS would you suggest?

[turbomeyers]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

I would just sell it all!


And buy an iPad.................. You'd be set! Chris, step in please.

yep . ipad ftmfw.
i will own one asap

[RONDAL]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

thats cool.

too bad i cant multitask or play xbox on an ipad.

back to original issue.

[Benjamin]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

If you get a NAS then all you would have to worry about is streaming, not copying.
Like I mentioned before my NAS downloads and streams bit torrent movies so their is no need to copy anything over the network.
If you are worried about wireless g streaming you should be fine. Last big copy over wireless g had about a 2.2 mb per second.
Last 720p movie 5000 mb for 90 mins which with all the division is less then 1 mb per second.

Unless you are doing a bunch of ff or rw you should be fine.

The NAS I have is from synology ds 210j with two I tb wd green drives.

I had wireless n but the router was crap and I didnt feel like going back. Also many of the wireless n routers had many issues which would not sit well with the wife. If it went down and her farmville crops died I was going to in some pretty deep crap.

The setup sounds good, and similar to something I am looking at. Only difference is no xbox and a wired connection to the media player. Everything also is streamed from the NAS so I don't have to waste time transferring.

Just some thoughts use them as you wish.

Ben

[darkmanCANADA]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

Jason what type of NAS would you suggest?

FreeNAS. Just re-use an old machine and plug in some USB drives.

[Tuna]

Re: Techno Geeks Unite...help me (un)wire my new place

I've heard pretty good things about the D-Link NAS and is the one I'd like to get, has RAID, built in FTP, I believe it has capability of having a bittorrent installed and you can put a USB printer on it to act as a network server.

Downside is it's only a 2bay so if you utilize the RAID that can be a limitation, but it's under 150 bucks, hard to find those features for that price. it sounds like you have several drives 4x1TB? So you may want to get a 4-bay but then the price goes way up.

This is just my opinion, others may have more direct experience with NAS' on a home network.