Home Network Changes
In the process of making some changes to my home network in an effort to reduce the amount of power I use for always-on equipment in the apartment. Or at least that’s what I tell people, actually I’m just in it for the gadgets.
Current network is my cable modem, connected to my home storage server/router, which is then connected to a WRT54g which is just being used as a switch and 802.11b/g access point. From there we have my desktop PC, and an Ethernet over powerline bridge to my entertainment center with the XBox 360 and the TiVo HD.
So the plan is to rip out the storage server (a Dell Dimension E521) and the WRT54g, replacing them with an Apple Airport Extreme with an external drive array. This also upgrades my wireless to 802.11n and my wired stuff to gigabit. Eventually, it’ll look something like this:
I picked up the Airport Extreme last night, planning to install it this weekend to take over routing and wireless. I figure I’ll keep the storage server around until I figure out what I want to do for an external drive array off the Airport. I’d like to get a drobo, but they’re still somewhat pricey to me. It is the simplest to maintain solution though.
I’d also like to keep a FreeBSD box on my network so I have something I can shell in to. Somewhat looking at the MSI Wind PC as a low power BSD box. I could mount storage from the Airport and just boot from a CF card (which the Wind PC supports, apparently) to keep power consumption down.
Of course, all of this means spending more money and adding to my pile of computer stuff I don’t use, which already contains a mini-ITX motherboard that I could use for a low-power BSD box, though it would mean buying a power supply and IDE/CF adapter, which would probably add up to most of the cost of the Wind PC and be less powerful. So I’m not sure which path I’m going to take.
I should probably just be happy with what I have and save my money, but what fun is that?
Very nice. Sounds like a good plan. Why the double Linksys in between the airport and the 360/Tivo? Is one the incoming powerline supply and the other the receiver on the other end? If so, good for you for avoiding the 360-wireless fiasco. Console gaming over WiFi is just plain wrong. What’s the speed like over the powerline compared to regular network cable?
@Matt Yeah, the PLE300 is a single Ethernet port powerline adapter, the PLS300 is a 4 port switch and powerline adapter. They claim 200Mbps over it, though I’ve never properly tested it. I’ve done gaming over it and watch streaming HD movies both from Netflix and just over my local network, and it’s always been fine. I should do some proper bandwidth testing over it sometime.