Network setup.

[format]

Right so,

I'm moving into a new flat in September, and there is going to be 3 guys (myself inc.) who are all heavy gamers and downloaders.
I also have an xbox 360 and we are thinking of getting a nice big TV to use it in the living room.
The flat has just been rewired and the wiring should be top notch, so I'm thinking of using a homeplug network, perhaps in conjunction with a wireless for laptops/mobile devices.
I don't know a lot about networking. I can set up a router and computers to receive signals or whatever but I think I'll need help/advice here.
I've heard the 360 is good for streaming movies/music etc to television and I'd like to encorporate it into our network. I also have an old PC I could use as a fileserver. What is the best way to utilize these devices to their best capability?
Now for the next problem. Being as we will all be using a lot of bandwidth ( I plan on going with Be, the fastest package I can get) what would be the best method of fairly distributing bandwidth? Ideally, I'd like each of us to get a certain amount of bandwidth and usage of said bandwidth would not effect any of the rest of us, for example if I was torrenting, it would not effect flatmates ping etc.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks.

[Jay]

I would expect that you would need your router in the living room. Run a cable to your Xbox 360 and if you can, have your file server in the living room wired into the router to give you a full 100mb connection.

Near to the router plug one home plug adapter into the wall and then into your router and in each room have one home plug.

If your file server is a 24/7 file server I would then run VM and run a firewall with QoS eg ClarkConnect. This should help with the share of bandwidth. Be aware that the housemates would need to agree to go via the firewall for all net access.

I'll do a Visio diagram in a bit.

[format]

Thanks Jay.
Any help with regards to best OS for fileserver would be appreciated too

[Jay]

If you want to use the MediaCenter on the 360 you need a uPNP OS eg XP, Vista etc. Otherwise you can use tversity but this does not work via Media Center.

[format]

Vista is fine, I'm pretty sure all of the PC's in the house will be running that.

[Jay]

I don't know how Vista runs as a file server and I have never seen it running any VMs at all. I think if you are going to use a desktop OS for a file server XP may be better.

[format]

Ok, that shouldn't be a problem, it'll interact ok with vista PC aye?

[Jay]

Yes, it will be fine.

Here is a quick Visio drawing

[format]

That looks perfect

Thank you very much

[hippoman]

if you are wanting to share your bandwith it might be worth looking at a router which can do qos (quality of service) which can prioritise certain protocols (usually used for viop etc) you might want to give priority to lag-sensitive services (gaming, media streaming etc) over torrents etc.

I know a lot of corporate level ciscos can do this but I'm not sure about home routers. might be worth setting up a low spec'd linux box with a couple of nics as a router.

[Jay]

might be worth setting up a low spec'd linux box with a couple of nics as a router.

Hence the VM I suggested.

[format]

Can you specify on the VM bit?

[Jay]

You can run a virtual Linux PC on your XP system. I run a 2003 server at home with a Squid Proxy in a virtual machine.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...c/default.mspx