Network Q

[sirwiggum]

A question, not the used Vauxhalls.

We have our Broadband going straight into a wireless router beside the phone in the hall.

Our TV, Bluray player, Raspberry Pi all have Ethernet ports.

The option is to either:

A: Run an ethernet cable from the router to a 4 port hub behind the TV
B: Electric ethernet sockets, the downstrairs should be on the same loop.
C: Wireless repeater? As in acting like a switch/hub but bridging to the wireless connection and having 3 or 4 ethernet sockets.

Highlander especially, is C doable? Are the leccy things in B any use?
Wire A might be a bit untidy

[rwb]

D: run a phone extension and put the router behind the tv ?

[sirwiggum]

There is a phone extension to upstairs and I was thinking of putting it there and running the cable through the ceiling and down the wall.

However the box of the extension the 4 wires are so fiddly and kept coming out I threw it at the wall.

[highlander]

We have our Broadband going straight into a wireless router beside the phone in the hall.

Our TV, Bluray player, Raspberry Pi all have Ethernet ports.

The option is to either:

A: Run an ethernet cable from the router to a 4 port hub behind the TV
B: Electric ethernet sockets, the downstrairs should be on the same loop.
C: Wireless repeater? As in acting like a switch/hub but bridging to the wireless connection and having 3 or 4 ethernet sockets.

Highlander especially, is C doable? Are the leccy things in B any use?
Wire A might be a bit untidy

Your best bet is a combination of A and B. Put a small switch (hubs are different, but I'm not sure anyone actually manufactures real hubs any more - this is a good thing, trust me) behind your TV. Use an electric ethernet socket connected to one port on your little switch, and connect your other devices to the other ports on the switch. Put another electric ethernet socket next to your broadband router.

Wireless is appealing because of, well, a lack of wiring - but there are major downsides:

1) You will NEVER get the maximum amount of bandwidth from a WiFi connection - that 54 Mbit/sec is purely theoretical
2) WiFi is half-duplex - meaning you cannot transmit at the same time you are sending
3) All clients on a WiFi access point run at the same speed - the speed of the slowest client (i.e. if you have 3 clients that are within 10 feet of the AP and they get 20 Mbit/sec or above, and someone joins from 40 feet away and gets between 2 Mbit/sec and 3 Mbit/sec, your 3 existing clients get downgraded)
4) WiFi performs poorly in terms of range in any environment that is not purely open space - it's great for covering open-plan offices and airport terminals, but generally pretty poor in home spaces where there are lots of walls and floors. It's also particularly poor in areas where there is a lot of metal, as the metal reflects and scatters the signals, causing interference.

WiFi should therefore always be considered an auxiliary service - never rely on it if you don't have to.

How'd you find the Raspberry Pi? Using it for anything particularly cool? The man behind the project is David Braben, who co-wrote the classic 3D space trading game "Elite" back in the '80s.

[sirwiggum]

Thanks Highlander for your answer.

I might investigate the leccy adaptors then. Any you recommend?

Last I used a hub was a few years ago, we put a hub in that was lying about in the lab for 2 servers that were an Oracle RAC pool.
Switches are that cheap now?

Didnt realise that Wifi was weakest link. Its handy for rented houses where you can't run wires, but now we own this place I want a proper network.
If I was building a house from scratch I'd have gigabitEthernet ports in every room.

The Pi is handy for youtube and that on the TV as it has HDMI out, is small enough to keep behind the TV and was cheap.
The UI can be a little slow, its probably more suited for bash scripts, perhaps as a firewall or some similar use.

[highlander]

Thanks Highlander for your answer.

I might investigate the leccy adaptors then. Any you recommend?

Last I used a hub was a few years ago, we put a hub in that was lying about in the lab for 2 servers that were an Oracle RAC pool.
Switches are that cheap now?

It was probably a switch you used - most companies producing "true" hubs stopped doing that some time ago because they're just sh*t - completely useless in the enterprise market, as they have no intelligence, no configurability, and are so dangerously inept that they are a complete liability.

The key difference between a hub and a switch is one of packet-forwarding intelligence - the switch is a true OSI model layer 2 device; it listens for MAC addresses on each port and will only forward packets for that MAC address out of the port it sees that MAC address on. Broadcast packets are still flooded out of every port, but it won't forward the broadcast packet back to the port it was sent from. Additionally, switches segregate each port into its own "collision domain", meaning you can transmit packets at the same time as receiving packets - you won't get collisions when connected to a switch and running at full duplex.

A switch is an OSI model layer 1 device - think of it as being a piece of wire and nothing more. Every packet is forwarded out of every port, including the port that sent it - and not just broadcast packets; every packet. So my PC would receive packets intended for your PC. And collisions occur because a hub cannot transmit and send simultaneously, forcing TCP packets to retransmit on collisions.

The reason the "hub" name has stuck with switches is because people think of them as being the centre of a "hub-and-spoke" network topology - while this is still technically true, it's just a bit of a misnomer - while you can think of a switch as a hub, it does so much more.

While you can go all-out and buy an enterprise-class managed switch from the likes of Cisco, this is still liable to severely damage your wallet. You can buy a true switch (albeit a "dumb" unmanaged one) from the likes of NetGear or Linksys.

NetGear GS108 8-port Gigabit switch
NetGear GS105 5-port Gigabit switch

As for the power socket LAN system, this is the one I bought:

Devolo dLAN Highspeed II (HomePlug) Network Kit - 3x Plugs

It has 3x plugs included, and a transmission rate of up to 85 Mbit/sec. True plug-and-play - no configuration necessary what-so-ever. No driver discs supplied or required. It works well enough in my house; I use a PC set up as a Windows domain controller, with an attached 1.5TB hard drive for backup purposes. My step-son's PC is in his room, and the other PCs are next to the server. His backups copy pretty quickly over the LAN. The third socket is beside the Cisco 857 ADSL router I have out in my hall, where the BT master socket is.

You get homeplug kits that are even faster than that now - you get 200 Mbits/sec ones and you get 500 Mbit/sec ones - but the costs are much higher. My advice is to buy a starter kit that has as many plugs in it as you think you'll need - don't mix-and-match homeplug kits from different brands, or different models from the same company.

[sirwiggum]

Thanks Highlander.

Been a few years now since I did the CCNA before I went into admin software, its all coming back to me.
Switches at layer 2, Routers at the layer 3 IP level.

I'll check that out the Devolo powerline adaptor, sounds like it would be just the ticket.
I remember my friends dad worked in Nortel Networks back in the mid 90s, some of the stuff he was working with sounded like magic / proof of concept that wouldn't catch on back then. Wireless and powerline networking.

Get the living room networked and find out what this smartTV is all about.

Are there any advantages to putting the Sky box on the network?
Do BskyB see what you're watching? (Mind it might help get some of the crap off if they took our sky box as representative - just repeats of the Sopranos and reruns of Mock the Week).

[highlander]

Are there any advantages to putting the Sky box on the network?

No idea, I've still only got the Sky+, no network socket on that. No Sky HD for me - at least, not until they drop the £10-a-month fee for Sky HD subscriptions. Evil money-grabbing bastards.

[sirwiggum]

HD charges are a bit of a scandal.

A bit like charging in the 60s for going from 405 line to 625 line. (For the last 5 years of RTE 405 broadcasting the output was effectively a feed from a 405 camera pointed at a 625 monitor! )

Though most of the terrestrial HD channels you can get for free? (BBC, C4, C5, RTE2 and a manual tune in of either ITV1 Granada/London HD or STV HD) paying gets you Sky1, Atlantic, News etc.

Looks good though on our 40" TV you have to sit close to really notice the difference. 50" or bigger TVs might be more noticable.

[highlander]

Though most of the terrestrial HD channels you can get for free? (BBC, C4, C5, RTE2 and a manual tune in of either ITV1 Granada/London HD or STV HD)

Sky won't sell you the box (£60) unless you subscribe to the Sky HD pack. I wouldn't mind paying £60 for the box and not subscribing to the pack, but that's not an option.

I know I could buy a box from eBay but then I'd be running the risk of receiving a 4-year-old box that doesn't work properly, rather than a shiny new one with a manufacturer's warranty on it.

My telly's only 37in, but I can tell the difference between SD and HD content (i.e. between the same movie on Blu Ray vs. DVD) from across the room. It's a Panasonic Viera, and it's an absolute cracker.

[sirwiggum]

Cash Convertors sell Sky HD boxes for £50 with a 6 month warranty.

Mine has been fairly reliable.
Infinitely better than the Virgin Media boxes.

Our TV is a Sony Bravia. HD content does look good, but SD doesn't look too bad on it. Maybe it upscales a bit. Certainly compared to Virgin Media's SD output which at times is like watching TV through frosted glass.

[Captain Jack]

The electrical socket-come-network-cables work OK but are limited to around 50Mbit in real life - noticeable when copying large files across the link. For streaming between devices, they work OK.

Don't bother with wireless repeaters. I set some up at home and they were dire at best. Like highlander says; half-duplex and not terribly good with walls.

I also have a 37" Panasonic Viera. Four years old now but works brilliantly and I can tell a difference between SD and HD. However, if SD is of really good quality, like some French channels on satellite (almost DVD quality - nothing like it comes close on Sky), then it's less noticeably so, but still noticeable.