Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with homenetworking

Given a blank slate, how would you network your house?

hydrophobic — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 03:55:03 -0800

How would you network your home if you had a blank slate? Wired or wireless? Our house is about to be almost entirely demolished and we have the opportunity to 'future-proof' our home. Given that the walls are down, should we take the chance to fill them full of wires? If so, what sort? The requirements:

1. Reliable. The #1 concern.
2. Secure.
2. High-capacity. HD media-streaming ready.
3. Affordable. This isn't a 'money is no object' question.
4. Low-maintenance. With no in-house tech. support, it needs to be easy to maintain. Any suggestions for really simple, user-friendly, network gear would be appreciated.
5. Future proof. If we go with wiring, it's going to be a long time before we can get in there and upgrade!

Bonus points: B+B guests should be able to gain access to the internet, without joining the intranet. Perhaps a wireless gateway isolated from the intranet?

Currently we're running on Ethernet-over-power sockets, but the new house will have 3 different mains circuits, so this will no longer be an option.

Borgify our home office!

specialnobodie — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:15:59 -0800

What's the best way for my wife and I to merge our computing equipment such that we both have access to everything? I'm interested in setting up some sort of print server and some sort of NAS-related device to make our home office more flexible and redundant. We have:

1 Mac Mini
1 PC Laptop
1 Laser printer 3-in-1
1 inkjet printer 3-in-1
2 unrelated and currently unused USB (IDE) harddrives
1 4port wired Linksys router(old. but still kicking)

We don't currently stream audio/video, so the NAS feature-set is really more focused on backup/sharing for the 2 computers.
Obviously, I'll have to buy SOMETHING to make this all work, but I'm interested in being efficient with my purchases. Has anyone faced this dilemma before and come out victorious? Can you help me wade through the masses of device reviews to pick the good stuff?

What is my strange home network setup missing?

penduluum — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 14:27:05 -0800

Home networking question: What piece of hardware do I need to share a ... actually I don't know how to phrase it correctly so I've included links to 2 simple schematic drawings. I need help connecting a file server and an Xbox 360 to my home network. Basically what I want is this. What should that mystery box be? Would a switch work? A network hub? Another router? The file server and the 360 don't exist yet, but I've checked the powerline network connection and it works. Wireless can be wonky in my house, and I don't want to connect the 360 wirelessly anyway. The router and cable modem (oh, there's an assumed cable modem between router and internet connection; sorry) can't be moved. Bizarre, I know, but true. Would this work? Are there other problems I haven't foreseen? Would server performance be hurt? I eventually want to set this server up to stream media, serve to me through a VPN connection when I'm elsewhere, etc.

If that setup wouldn't work, or if there's no such piece of hardware as I would need for the mystery box, would this setup work? Would the two powerline adapters interfere with each other?

Nomadic computer components must be civilized

saysthis — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 22:32:22 -0800

I'm looking for inspiration on how to reduce computer clutter. I run a lot of machines and make them do a lot of cool things, but in a 92sqm apartment where we're also trying to manage massive DVD, magazine, and book libraries, and where my previous work station (which was never all that orderly) has been conquered by my girlfriend's rampaging makeup and sewing stuff, it ain't easy. I want to compartmentalize, organize, and speed up the process of accessing my stuff. Ideas? The crux of the problem is that I have a LOT of "computer stuff", and that the network of stuff which we currently have is about to be scaled up, bigtime, due to an impending move to a bigger house. I'll want to include scalability and a solid phalanx of l33t gadgets in the future.

I've just been booted by my fashion designing wife off the corner of the room I used to use for more of her albums of pictures exactoed from fashion magazines. And, in the past year and a half, I've gone from 1 buggy laptop and a big USB hard drive to a substantial accumulation of knowledge and stuff, as I've begun exploring exactly what open source software can really do. I've been suitably impressed made much progress with it, paring down our AV setups from crappy independent DVD players, cords, and all kinds of discs to an interconnected system all controlled from my laptop. Up to now, I've kept the extra stuff in...well, piles. But the recent chaos of her expanding business, my expanding capabilities with hardware, and our impending move is a chance to get this beast under control before it becomes a cancer that conquers all of our available desktop space.

My inviolable principles include:
a) that one of my hobbies is fixing up junk and giving it away. It's an interesting means to get to know people, expand your network, and learn and practice computer skills. Gift economy 4 lyfe.
b) I'm a strong believer in ghettotech, and almost everything I own on the list was inherited. I've spent maybe $500 on computer stuff since 2006. Triple-R 4 lyfe.
c) I take an "appliance" approach to computers - the "all-under-one-box" approach has never worked for me, as something's always gone wrong or I've filled up the hard drive or busted the software and had to reinstall, and I've wasted much too much of my life on downtime and much too much of my money on new machines that proceed to break and not do what it says on the box. Modular single-purpose units 4 lyfe.

We have:
3 desktops
- a sweet media/gaming FrankenPC that gets hooked up to the living room projector
- a gutted box that serves as an uberNAS, with 6 IDE slots, 2 SATA plugs, and 12 USB ports (you bet your ass my data is redundant)
- a clumpy old workstation for volunteers in my organization who can't travel to our main office or the other side of the city; my house is the only locale we have on the east side of the city, and in Beijing, where a lot of the students we rely on to do our volunteer work sometimes don't have computers, or need to work or train with me in person

2 laptops
- my trusty daily driver, from whence I also manage this stuff, a 2005 ultraportable
- my lady's beater, an early 2004 Dell Inspiron, which is likely about to bite the bullet, and will need replacing soon

Peripherals
- bluetooth mouse & keyboard x2, for when I, and the woman don't feel like hunching over my/her laptop
- USB mice and keyboards for the desktops (or laptops if we want to)
- USB bluetooth adapters when necessary, I think we're at 4 now
- an optical drive in an external case - it keeps me from having to buy separate ones for each unit, and we rarely use it, but sometimes I do need to burn things (I work in post-production, clients occasionally just want a multiplexed DVD) or get at something on a disc (rip, mount to virtual drive)
- a grip of thumb drives that I use for data transport, disk images, booting, what have you, all neatly labeled
- a VOIP handset
- CORDS!!! yards and yards of wire in every shape and size, 'cause, y'know, things gotta get linked to things
- a totally sick wireless router
- hard drive USB cases, leftover from the days when I didn't have an uberNAS, and waiting for more hard drives to be connected to the uberNAS
- much of this all needs its own power cord, and I have them in abundance
- the odd RAM & PC card, motherboard, and whatnot waiting for a home in the computers I take home and patch up for friends and family
- various backup hardware in case something important goes kaput
- a couple WIFI cards for laptops, mostly for guests, but the woman's laptop currently needs one to get online.
- 2 monitors for the workstation, gaming machine, and occasional maintenance.

Right. Well, we're moving from a 92sqm apartment to a much much larger one in the coming months (as soon as the decorators are finished!), and we'll be expanding from our current setup of:
- 2 TV's controlled by the media machine
- uberNAS in a corner behind the couch
- laptops on the coffee table
- workstation on a teensy desk in the bedroom
- one phone hookup

to a two-floor apartment with:

- 4+ TV's & audio setups on two floors that all want access to the uberNAS
- a dedicated office for the woman's girlygirl stuff (er, actually, her job) and my own office/den/schmoke lounge for manlyman things
- wherever the uberNAS goes, probably my office
- an upstairs living room with
- the gaming box
- a PS3 (!!!)
- and a downstairs all-purpose studio that wants access to same (this room is a party area, yoga/dance studio, movie screening room, all kinds of fun stuff, but it all calls for proper geekery, and will likely want powered USB gadgets)
- a gajillion phone jacks and in-wall wiring for just about everything but VGA and HDMI
- probably more area and rebar than one wireless router can handle

The wife's hobbies call for lots of shelving and workspace, while mine only calls for a philips screwdriver, voltometer, and lots of teensy compartments. All this stuff, other than the stuff that's actually out and in use, calls for, at most, a dresser-drawer-sized space, but it requires a lot of compartmentalization and protection from dust and spills. I'm looking for inspired solutions on how to minimize and properly store the cords, components, peripherals, and other buildup that goes along with a hobby like this.

The best ideas I've had are toolboxes or tackleboxes for the loose stuff, twist-ties for the cords, a moratorium on any new desktops in the system (any new TV/media hookups are going to be disposable 2ndhand laptops w/ S-video outs and wireless), and a desk area that can be cleared for maintenance if need be. And that might be good enough, but I bet I could improve on it.

I'd love to hear creative, inspired storage solutions if you got 'em!

How to pull cable using existing cable

Jupiter Jones — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:02:27 -0800

Our home builder installed cat6 network cable for me as a favor, but now that we've moved in, a cable tester now reports it as shorting out. Wires 5&6 are shorting. I guess they treated the cable too roughly. Does anyone have any advice for me on using the old cable to pull new cable through the walls to the second floor? If I was to install a messenger cable for future pulls at the same time, what should I use for that? I figure that I would pull two cables at once to future proof myself. How would I go about attaching these two cables to the cable being replaced so that it wouldn't break in the walls? Duct tape?

I've read references in other questions here about network cabling to "messenger cables", which you could use to pull further cable in the future, which seems like a good idea. What should I get at Home Depot to act as a messenger cable?

Any general advice on how to do this without treating the cable so roughly again that it breaks? I read about data cable lubricants for pulling... is this a good idea? What would you use for that?

I think the cable may be coming through a hole between an HVAC line and the floor on the second floor, which may be the culprit for breaking the line. I bought the house while it was half built, and he had already drywalled before I asked him to pull networking cable and coax cable.

Network reachable, but (Suddenly) file sharing stops working. Any thoughts?

TrueVox — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:16:26 -0800

My home network isn't cooperating. It worked fine for months, and then, unexpectedly (after a day of bad electricity (I hate my power company)), it isn't. See, if I couldn't connect to the internet (wired or wireless, no less!), I'd assume that my router was simply fried. But no, I can get to teh interwebs. Thankfully, even to the far reaches of Ask Mefi :). However, my file sharing (and printers too!) isn't functional. It's SMB file sharing (though I'm running a couple of Linux machines on the network too with SaMBa). I can ping the rest of the network, there's just something STUPID that I'm missing (I assume). Or can a power surge/failure fry JUST THAT PART of the router (I find that hard to believe, it's all just TCP or UDP, right?).

Anyway, thanks in advance!

Advice for building a home media network with virtually unlimited budget.

anotherpanacea — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 11:23:50 -0800

Home Media Networking Filter: Advice for building a home media network with virtually unlimited budget. Ideally, this network will connect four or five televisions to a media server and a big DVD jukebox. Once I've set it up, it should be extremely easy to use, and allow some sort of intuitive PVR functionality. I's also like to have the capacity to get 1080p on all the televisions in the house, though at present only two of them are able to pull that off.

The media box seems pretty easy: dual Hauppauge tv tuners, mythTV or maybe the PC version of ReplayTV, dual 500GB SATA drives, etc. But how do I connect all that data to the televisions spread around the house? I'm planning on using wireless N, but what's at the other end? Xbox Media Extenders? AppleTV? MiniPCs? How can I ensure that the interfaces at each television are maximally simple to use?

In order for this setup to be absolutely perfect, it should allow the user to watch live or recorded television, something purchased from Itunes, or a movie on the DVD shuffler, pause it, and then move to another room and continue where she left off. It should also be possible to do different things at each screen. Is this an absurd demand? I'd also consider a Mac based solution, if PCs aren't up to the task at present, but I'd need a lot more guidance.

Network attached storage for media streaming on Mac

cahlers — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 04:30:25 -0800

I'm interested in setting up network-attached storage for my media, which mostly consists of digital photos (iPhoto) and 70+ GB music accessed via iTunes. I'd appreciate any links to blogs, etc. discussing this sort of thing for the Mac. My music collection continues to expand. Currently I have AirTunes over a wireless connection, and iPhoto and iTunes libraries on a 250 GB external Lacie drive. Eventually I'll want to set up a Sonos system. I have some time to set all this up, since it won't happen until I move this summer. That also means I'll have some control over wireless modem placement, etc.

I already looked at this link: http://techdigs.net/content/view/134/46/, and am interested in other discussions along these lines.

. . . building a home network so cool, it's HOT.

datacenter refugee — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 00:24:27 -0800

Not-My-Walls-To-Cut-Through-Filter: Anyone have experience running Cat5 through HVAC ducts? I just moved into a space-limited Row Home and would like to keep my rack of various equipment (dvr, X10, security, nas) out of sight and earshot. The basement looks to be ideal for this purpose - but with plaster walls and new hardwood floors I can't in good conscience drill to run cable to the first and second floors. New windows eliminate the possibility of external-house runs, and the existing cableTV drops were drilled through the houses external brick and grometted. The only option seems to be the existing heating duct. There is a straight vertical duct-work run to all floors that terminates in the basement roughly 8' from the furnace itself. My non-plenum rated cable says it has a max operating temp of 140°F.

My question(s):

- Has anyone ever done this?
- Did the cable (or even cable jacket) melt?
- Would a 70+ year old duct run have built-in obstructions like a grate or something to stop urban rodents?

Thanks in advance!

NAS for dummies 2

Dave 9 — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 11:27:35 -0800

Network Attached Storage for dummies 2 [a follow-up to this post]: If you backup your home computers to a device that's also sitting in your home, do you then take additional backups off site? And what about encryption? (Thinking of fire, or if the babysitter walks out of the house with the NAS drive in her backpack.) (1) Do folks backup the backup? I'd welcome any thoughts, methods, recommendations.
(2) Can any of the NAS devices do encryption on the fly? Would be nice if stolen data remained inaccessible.

Traffic shaping with a cheap consumer router

Eamon — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 21:35:04 -0800

Are there any inexpensive home routers with support for traffic shaping? I'm willing to load third-party firmware as long as it's stable and cheap. It looks like some of the alternate firmware distributions for the Linksys WRT54G can do this... if you've done traffic shaping with one, I'd love to hear about your experience. However, I'd prefer to save money and forego wireless capability if possible, since this thing will be sitting in my basement. Besides, I already have a fine wireless router that I plan to use as a WAP in my improved network.

I am aware that I could just set up an old computer for this, but since I don't have one handy, I'd wind up spending more money on a PC and a switch. A consumer router would also generate less heat and consume less power.

TivoToGo without a Network

anastasiav — Thu, 05 May 2005 09:16:28 -0800

How do I extract a file from my Tivo and put it onto my computer? We have a Series2 box, but it is not networked in any way - we would need to physically hook a computer to the Tivo (somehow). Tivo provides this helpful information about how to play the files once they're moved, but nothing about how to actually move them, except the TivoToGo info, which requires that the Tivo be networked, which is more trouble than we want to go to to remove a single clip.

The eventual goal is to burn some material to DVD for storage, rather than saving it to video tape. I'm sure there is a simple way to do this, and that people do it all the time, but clearly we are not those people.

Rookie Home Networker

jonmc — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 10:32:50 -0800

I've just recently set up my first wireless home network consisting of a Win XP box on a cable modem hooked up to an AirPort Extreme sending a signal to an iBook. It's working great except for problems with my favorite p2p program (WinMX). I now have to use a "secondary" connection to the network which yeilds less effective search results and performance and I am unable to upload files to the network. My research tells me that I need to do some fiddling with my firewall to make things work better, which is uncharted territory for me. Does anyone know what I need to do, and can you explain it to me in basic, clear terms. Thanks.

Mp3 Players for Home Stereo

skwm — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 12:54:43 -0800

Looking for recommendations on networked mp3 players for a home stereo. [+] I've been browsing around, and there are an awful lot of them available. The Netgear MP101, the SliMP3 Squeezebox, the TurtleBeach AudioTron, and a whole lot more.

Features I'm lookg for are:
- wireless ethernet
- no local storage - all mp3's will reside on my server, not on the mp3 device
- RCA output
- simple to control from the front panel/remote control. I don't want to have to pre-load it with playlists, or go to my PC to choose what songs to stream to it
- My mp3s are scattered in a few locations, so the device will need to be able to "mount" several network paths at once
- Price is important, but I will pay more if it's worth it.
- I don't really care if it plays other formats besides your standard mp3.