Which Networking Technology Is Right For Your Home?

[scryer_360]

People said I was crazy when I hooked up a router and two sixteen port switches and put at least two Ethernet connections in each room.

Who is crazy now?

 

[huron]

Thanks for the article. I figured Gigabit Ethernet would be the leader, but didn't realize how siginificantly. I've wanted to wire the house, but am worried about how difficult it'll be.

 

[fflam]

huron depending on what your house is layed out like it can be quite easy. if it is a 1 level house built like 1965 or newer you can just jump into the attic drill a hole in the sill plate (2x4 that is on top of a wall) and drop a cable down. if it is older then there are actually big x's in your wall and you need a LONG drill bit (can get at home depot) to drill though it. but if it is a 2 story it can get more difficult, depending on the lay out. if nothing else you can crawl under the house and do the same thing if you have vaulted ceilings with no attic. but then again maybe it is easy for me because i have been doing it for so long.

 

[beatcoaster]

Once again proof positive that the couple weekends I spent inhaling insulation in the attic and fighting off spiders in the crawlspace to run cat5e to every room in my home was well worth it...streaming 1080p movies to my ps3 from my computer upstairs is of course, gratification enough.

 

[AtuBrian]

[citation][nom]blackmancer[/nom]+1 wired ethernet connections all the time!!!!!!!![/citation]
+1

 

[michaelahess]

"Few people would endure the expenses in time or money to string Fast Ethernet in a structured wiring retrofit, but Gigabit Ethernet is another story."

How do you "String fast ethernet?" Who uses Cat4 anymore? Cat5, even the non e varient can do gig speeds over the distances we are talking about.

That's a very poor statement. If you can afford to run anything, just use cat5e or cat6 if you can find it cheap and don't worry about any other tech. I only use wireless for laptops and portable devices, all my gaming devices and PC's are hard wired. No substitute.

 

[falchard]

Wow all that to prove, Ethernet/Fiber Optic blows any other option out of the water.

 

[sodaant]

While I do agree with the end results, I think that the data from the wired Ethernet is a bit flawed, especially on the small file test. I don't think this is a limitation of the network, but one of the hard disks transferring the data, especially as the performance from the small file is much smaller than the large file, which would be normal in hard disks. Now, if you redid this test, you would find that wired gigabit ethernet blows the competition out of the water even more. While I realize that most consumers won't have ssds, not using one is introducing an unnecessary variable.

 

[Guest]

Oddly, you didn't include HPNA adapters in this test.

I recently benchmarked HPNA against MoCA for a project and the HPNA units performed substantially better. I am using the latest HPNA 3.1 units over coax (with the newest CopperGate chipset). I was able to sustain 4 X 23 Mbps multicast UDP streams of video without any issues, over 600' of coax (point to piont). Given the purported maximum throughput on the coax of up to 320 Mbps I suspect I could add additional adapters in other rooms and continue that performance for at least a few more streams (SNR permitting).

ATT Uverse apparently uses HPNA/HCNA as does Telus in Canada. They aren't readily available at retail that I have found, but you can get units from: http://www.netsys-direct.com/proddetail.php?prod=NH-310CEKIT&cat=27 (not affiliation other than as a customer).

 

[Neog2]

[citation][nom]nicnash[/nom]btw great article on these lesser known technologies. this article is worth its weight in gold to those who care[/citation]
If you are using windows in your network properties you would just
select what connection you wished to use. Kinda like most laptops
have two internet connections.

You can either plug up, or be wireless, but if you plug up, you can
still select a wireless network. (Must disable auto connect when plugged in though, on your ethernet settings.)

I do this at my business all the time. My Wired network is private,
and my wireless network is public for my customers.

 

[WR2]

Good stuff. Thanks for the report.

 

[raybob95]

I have a mini home network with my Main PC in the corner of my house. My router sits in a cabinet next to my PC, with 2 Ethernet connections going out, 1 to my PC the other to my old PC sitting in the corner, with the cable for that just going across the floor (soon to be changed thank God.) and a PlayStation 3 in the basement, conveniently right under the router. However, I didn't run another cable to the PS3 even though I had already drilled a hole behind the computer to run other cables, including a USB Cable to my record player, a TV Cable, and a VGA/Analog Audio cable for my HDTV.

So point is, on my 10 Mbps Internet Connection and 802.11g Netgear router, Netflix HD Media streams flawlessly (and wirelessly) to my PS3, at only 10Mbps or less.

 

[BlueCat57]

Maybe I'm completely offbase with this but here goes.

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link; therefore, a network is no faster than its slowest part.

Gigabit Ethernet 1 Gbs

Wireless N 600 Mbs

Wireless G 54 Mbs

ATT U-verse Max Plus 18 Mbs (fiber optic delivery)

ATT FastAccess Xtreme DSL 3 Mbs (6 Mbs is available, phone line delivery)

Question 1: So if I'm sitting in my living room and want to surf the net and I have a 3 Mbs connection to the Internet isn't the fastest I'm going to surf 3 Mbs? Isn't the connection speed going to make a bigger difference when I stream a TV show than the network speed in my house?

Question 2: If I have ripped music or a movie (legally of course) to my home media server and want to listen to it on another system isn't Wireless G fast enough for well over 90% of the situations?

Question 3: What percentage of homes watch 3 Blu-Ray movies simultaneously at least once a week?

What I'm really asking is: Is it worth hundreds of dollars to upgrade a home to even Wireless N speeds for the vast (over 90%) majority of the homes in the United States since at best they can get an 18 Mbs connection to the Internet?

I don't know the numbers offhand but my impression is that most countries outside the U.S. connect to the Internet at much, much faster speeds. I couldn't figure out if this article was about the US (of course I think EVERYTHING is about the US) or if it was written in the UK or elsewhere. But for the typical home in the US won't it be years before anything faster than G is needed?

 

[Hap]

My D link; DI 604, has been working great for yrs

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]williamvw[/nom]Much as I appreciate your comments, I'll disagree with you on this one point and perhaps dispel the notion of being "bought" by Netgear in the process. You sound like you've been burned by D-Link purchases in the past, and I'm sorry to hear that. I'll agree that D-Link tends not to be the top-ranking product in most roundups. In my experience, they historically are on par with Linksys, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your viewpoint. In the end, though, I've had very few problems with the D-Link equipment on my own network (which is consumer-class, nothing even close to the fiber switch level). D-Link tends to be ahead of the curve on consumer feature adoption, which I appreciate. I can't make a statement about their commercial gear because I haven't used it, but suffice it to say that, on the consumer side, I've had no major complaints about the products or service over several years of use and testing.[/citation]

Years ago I upgraded the company network on the address I'm currently employed. I upgraded from bnc cables with repeaters to Dlink based 10/100 switches with Gigabit uplink ports. In theory it worked great. But given the feature adoption you mentioned above, the big DES-6000 switches didn't work properly with the DES-1226 ones until I'd spend about a day or so talking to a tech from Dlink and he had realized that the small 1226 switches couldn't auto default to the only link speed available if they're not connected to another small (1U) switch. One of the 6000 switches didn't even last a year before it broke. I did this upgrade about winter 2000 I think, and in summer 2001 I had a catastrophic breakdown because the switches stopped operating when the room temperature exceeded 35C. So we had to improvise cooling and whitewash the top down windows (old building ; flat roof) just to keep them working. Within the first 2 years I've probably had 4 or 5 switches replaced, and about 2005 the firmware started to malfunction ; all vlan data would be sent to the first vlan defined, and the rest would work normally. Happened on serveral switches over the course of a year or so until I had figured out the source of the erratic problems we saw as a result, and disabled vlan on as many as we could. When I took all the dlink junk down I couldn't even get rid of it! Nobody wanted it until just before I meant to throw it away, some dude picked it up for a private network he was building. That is what I know about the old Dlink switches. The modern ones are much quieter (means they're just loud), or they're passively cooled. The latter is slow, and the former type is fine and actually works. They've got one thing in common though except for the brand name, and taht is a very very complicated configuration console. If you've tried cisco or 3com, you know there are ways to make configurations seem impressively complicated without actually having to make it complicated. Dlink is the other way around. They'll make even the simplest task seem impossible.
As for consumer gear. We've got, or had, dlink desktop switches in use in a location where computers were hanging from a hollow cylinder in which network and power was distributed. We put cheap dlink switches in there (no noise, and low cost) only to find out that once in a while one or two of the ports would stop working, and you'd have to unplug the power to the switch, wait some seconds, and then power on again for it to work. And that's generally how all dlink consumer stuff works. Easy to set up, easy to understand, and easily the most annoying thing to have around as you always have to reboot it if it has to work.
And did I mention the dwl-900 (think that was the model name) ap units we had? coverage was rubbish, but worse was that once a week or so we'd have to boot them because they'd stop working. And one by one they just stopped working completely - even the utility to update firmware couldn't find them anymore.

In short, dlink isn't any good.
I've tried other noname quality products as well, and except for trendnet's wierd numbering on their cheap 1U switches, they're all fine and working as advertised. Just dlink isn't, at least not for many hours at a time.

Now the wireless is Meru, and the wired network is based on managed hp modular switches. It's a different world entirely.

 

[BlueCat57]

While discussing the quality of different brands is useful to form an overall impression of a brand, this discussion of D-Link's high-end products in the context of a consumer-level home network is like talking about Chevy's NASCAR efforts in the context of buying a used car for your child to drive around town. Of little relevance. I'm sure Tom's has a business networking forum that would be appropriate for the discussion.

I can't even tell you the brand of my home router or what I'm using in my computers without looking. I know I bought a $20 Belkin wireless router while I was on vacation to set up a network in the house we were staying in. The network setup without any trouble and worked for all the various brands of notebooks that were in use.

I just built an HTPC. The only part I reused was a D-Link PCI wireless g card. I pulled it out of an old (3+ years at least)Dell desktop and plugged it into the slot that looked like the best one to put it in. After I got the system to boot and install Windows 7 it asked if I wanted to connect to my home network. I guess the D-Link card works just fine despite being several years old and me doing nothing but sticking it in a slot.

That's pretty much all the typical consumer cares about. Oh, and price. I generally submit my rebate forms so I often get low-end, consumer products that work just fine for years for free or pretty close (the government always wants its sales tax).

 

[Guest]

What i would be interested in knowing is what the performance of the power line unit is when presented with local interference from Ham radio operators? or what level of interference it gives to local Ham radio operators? They radiate noise and can receive signals from Ham radios which cause them to stop working completely for extended periods of time. Just another thing to consider if you live in a residential area.

 

[drewcwsj]

One follow up I'd like to see would be to test the multiplexing abilities. As you know MoCA, HomePlug and 802.11 are multi-drop technologies. So several devices can share the same wire as there is rarely home-run installs of coax or powerline (or CAT-3 if you had tested HomePNA). What would happen if you were streaming 1080P between two adapters and then started VOIP (or a femtocell) through a third and Xbox Live gaming on a fourth. This to me is a more accurate simulation of a digital home but something that never seems to get tested. For the future home think about multiple streams of video at even higher data rates as 1080P 3D becomes prevalent.

 

[huntluck]

wirless is some what not so secure in current period so go with wired as it is simply locked down

 

[Guest]

both the wifi n & MoCA cost enough if you consider that each new N adapter costs about $50-100 & whereas MoCA only needs 1 per room + a switch. currently the actiontec MoCA adapters are the cheapest($100) & require little or no configuration & small switches only cost about $10-20