So, I'm about to move rooms with my brother and wondering how I should do the...

[Bryce]

So, I'll be swapping rooms with my brother as I've got no space in my certain room, yes I still live at home, ashame isn't it. Anyways, his room is the bonus room over the garage and I'm thinking of redoing the entire house networking while I've got everything out and disconnected. I've already set a corner of the room that is about the size of my room now, but just for the computers crap I've got. So, my question is, how should I go about networking so that my family's computer downstairs doesn't experience slowdowns like it does now, I would run a cat5/6 cable down there but that's not happening, so it's wireless for now. Any advice on that? Also, would having my cable modem hooked up to a seperate router/switch and then going to the switch for my computers in the house keep the network traffic from interferring with the internet traffic? I'm trying to go really advanced so that I get some experience setting up, managing, etc, etc networks and such. I'm also thinking of getting my super old PCs hookedup once again as well. Any advice on what to use them for? They're not really good for folding, so any other advice on them? Lastly, how should I wire manage all the wires? I'll be having a couple server racks (~10-15 foot ones I think they are) sitting in front of my desk (the back of it) where I can easily reach things if I need to with the wires running behind it somewhere. Any advice on how I should wire manage, set the network up, etc?

[Rider200]

Hi Bryce,

A couple of thoughts -

I have both wired and wireless in my house. The orginal setup was wired but when the Misses moved her computer desk the thought of going back in to the attic and pulling two Cat6 cables of fifty feet then fishing them through the walls was not my idea of a Saturday well spent.

We have a wireless switch and a signal booster. This is what my setup looks like:

DSL modem --> Router --> Proxy/firewall server --> main wired switch --> all wired computers;

main switch --> wireless switch

wireless switch ==> one wireless computer;

wireless switch ==> signal booster --> tower computer (the Misses) --> My laptop any where with in 400 feet of the signal booster!

Adding the signal booster was not cheap but the range increase was well worth the cost. I can now use my laptop in the garage, down by the pool (about 100 feet from the house) or in any room in the house and always have an excellent signal, where as before it was a struggle to get a fair signal over fifty feet from the wireless switch.

So I would suggest if you are using a wireless switch or router that you use a signal booster strategically postitioned to cover most of the area you want to use the wireless devices in.

Easier than pulling wires. :)

[Bryce]

I'm thinking since the other room is pretty much directly in front of the staircase, I'd put the wireless switch sortof in line with that, and then put the signal booster downstairs on a table in front of the stairs. Then, that should cover the house and yards you think?

As for my router, it's got the built in wireless on it so that elimates one other thing I would need to buy. Also, what are you using for your proxy/firewall server? Sounds interesting to try out XD.

Cable Modem > Router (built in wifi) > Firewall Server > Switch > Computers

But then the computers on wireless will sort of bypass the firewall server lol. Would putting another firewall server between the cable modem and router work or would that just be to much you think?

[Rider200]

Hi,

I have the proxy/firewall server between the router and the main wired switch, then the wireless on the main switch.

This way all computers have to go through the proxy server or no access outside of my network.

Hope this helps...

[Bryce]

I guess I could pick up another wifi router and disable the wifi on the first one so that everyone goes through the firewall. My next question is, how would I keep things from slowing down? I'll be surfing/downloading/gaming on my PC, but then others will be downloading/etc downstairs and it just slows down a lot. I usually only see my high download speeds once or twice a month when no one else is using the network. Anyway to split up network traffic and internet traffic or something like that?

[Rider200]

It is all up to your switches and router, the speed between the modem and the ISP is set by the ISP, currently I am at 7 mega bit (bit not byte) and run about 6.5 Kbytes per second on downloads, I downloaded the Windows 7 beta, took about fifteen minutes (I really wasn't watching the time) and no one else in the house had any problems.

Back when the ISP's fastes speed was 1.5 Mega bit when I downloaded a large file then the connect to the www was slow, sometimes painfully slow.

The thing is all the computers that are wired should be set for 100/full and then your wireless will be at what the nic is built for, right now we have four 2.4G wireless and five wired systems and do not see any drag on the network at all.

I can even do ghost images and no one sees a differance on the network.

I may up the wired to Giga bit in the near future, this will not effect the internet because the connection between the proxy server and the modem will still be 100/full.

Hope this helps...

[MARCI]

By downloading, do you mean regular downloads, or p2p/torrenting? If p2p/torrenting then you're gonna have to manage QoS, It's not the downloading that kills your, it's the uploads, and large numbers of open connections.

[Rider200]

Hi Marci,

Nope download. The only things I upload are html pages (really text) and images for my web sites, and of course e-mail. So the most part small files...

[MARCI]

Rider, I was talking to the OP, who mentioned network slowdowns when others were downloading

[Bryce]

Thanks for the info on this. Kinda new to networking but should be simple enough to get one working right. The network I have now isn't really a network, you can't even share files/printers from one PC to another lol. Now, any advice on putting one of my old computers to use as a proxy/firewall server? I'll be using Linux, so what tools would I need to get that working?

[Rider200]

Hi Bryce,

I am a Windows guy, no Linux experance to speak of. I would think the basic premis of the server with firewall and proxy would be the same with either OS.

The firewall/proxy software I use is Wingate, although I think that Linux server (Red Hat that Novell bought) has the firewall/proxy built in to it the distro, not positive, it has been about six years since I setup a Novell server and that was 5.0.

HTH...