[SOLVED] Setting up a home reliable network + home server

[d239919]

Dear Community,

I would like to ask a few questions on how to set up my home network in such a way to reduce latency and make it reliable. So far, I have a simple router that came from the ISP and all devices are connected directly to it (mostly wirelessly and I feel like it sometimes gets overwhelmed with data). Would it be reasonable to use a powerline adapter and add a new router or switch to it? Would adding another router improve the flow of data and therefore, reduce latency? I am also thinking about replacing the router which I received from the ISP as it does not allow me to change the DNS address and it also does not allow me to clear the DNS cache.

I was also thinking about getting a home server such as this Western Digital Home Personal Cloud. Is it worth buying? And would I be able to stream music or any videos away from home when I am not connected on the same network? I will appreciate any ideas and suggestions. Thank you in advance.

 

[bill001g]

You local network will not cause lag other than what you get on wifi. You need to be sure that the NAS is plugged into ethernet. Anything else you need performance on should also be plugged into ethernet.

The ISP router will be as fast as any other router for lan. The LAN ports on a router are a small switch the traffic never even goes to the router CPU. You pretty much will never get more than a couple ms of delay even when ports are fully utilized.

If you get delays on wifi it is mostly due to interference and you can't really fix that. Powerline will to a point fix it but like wifi the number they quote are marketing and you will only get a tiny fraction. Buy av2-1200 models they have the most bandwidth but almost all powerline you will only see 2-3ms of latency.

 

[d239919]

So a powerline adapter would be a solution if I were to connect a computer directly through ethernet if it is in another room. And if I needed to connect anything else then I could just add a small switch. Right? And at what kinds of speeds would I be able to transfer data? Does it depend on the adapter and also on the allowance from the ISP?

At some times, there could be up to 30 devices connected and mostly through WiFi. Is that too much? This also includes smartphones and other smart home devices such as Google Home and I believe, they do not take up that much bandwidth and especially if they are idle, but sometimes, I feel like there is a bit of lag due to interference, so adding a powerline adapter could be the solution because I could connect all the important devices through ethernet, right? Thank you.

 

[bill001g]

You want as much as you can connected via real ethernet. A switch will add more ports to the router and does not really restrict the traffic. Of course all the machines share a single 1 gig port back to the router but that is not a issue for most people.

You have to be a little careful with powerline. Even though they say crap like 1200 it will get less than 200mbps for most people. For internet surfing that is not much of a restriction but for coping files to say a NAS device 200mbps can be slow. You can easily get 500mbps to most NAS devices and high end ones can get over 900mbps. Of course it depends on what you are coping, you only get full speed if you copy large files. Lots of small files have lots of overhead.