Home Network for HD Streaming

[PeteSmith]

Hi, i just moved into my new place. It's a rental so drilling holes in walls and routing cat5 is unfortunately not on the cards (this would have been my preferred method). My Virgin 'not so' superhub is downstairs in the lounge wired up to my PS3 and Popcorn Hour. My home office is upstairs with both my workstations, NAS, printer, and work laptop wired via a netgear gigabit switch.

My conundrum is how do i connect the switch in the office to the cable router downstairs. The aim here is to stream full HD content from my NAS to my Popcorn Hour/PS3 downstairs. Currently i have Cat5e cable trailed down the stairs and into the lounge as a short term fix.

I have considered both creating a wireless bridge and using home plug to connect both parts of the network. Both have there drawbacks in terms of streaming HD content but wanted to get your views on which will yield the best performance and stability. I'm leaning towards a wireless bridge, but need some assistance on setting it up and getting it working.

I have seen these belkin gigabit powerline adapters which i thought were excellent for the money but apparently the reviews state they perform worse than the netgear 200mb equivalent.

Also is there any other way of doing this?

[spoon_]

These Belkin home plugs are plain awful, stay well away!

I'm using Devolo 200Mbps home plugs [mix of dLAN 200 and dLAN 200 AV] to stream my 'content' about the flat [same as you, rental place, drilling hole is a no-no] and they work really well!

720p/1080p with DTS sound - no issues at all

If that would be enough [which I highly doubt] Devolo got some 500MBps plugs to offer:

http://www.devolo.co.uk/consumer/dla...mbit.html?l=en

I have tried wireless N 130Mbps and the speed is just pathetic, 2m away from the router and speed was around 2-3MB/s... This is on rather expensive D-Link router [DIR-825, £90+] and even more expensive wireless card [DWA-160, £40+]

Homeplugs are such a neat solution and work really well, no drops, interference, multiple networks around you and all this mess.

[CrimsonAvenger]

I'd agree with Spoon.

Devolo 200Mb homeplugs work very well for streaming HD content.

I've used them to stream content from my NAS to BD360, PS3 and Xbox an no problems with any of them at all.

With HD streaming in my experience wireless is a complete no no.

Above all, they just work, no hassle as Spoon has said

[Biscuit]

These Belkin home plugs are plain awful, stay well away!

I'm using Devolo 200Mbps home plugs [mix of dLAN 200 and dLAN 200 AV] to stream my 'content' about the flat [same as you, rental place, drilling hole is a no-no] and they work really well!

720p/1080p with DTS sound - no issues at all

If that would be enough [which I highly doubt] Devolo got some 500MBps plugs to offer:

http://www.devolo.co.uk/consumer/dla...mbit.html?l=en

I have tried wireless N 130Mbps and the speed is just pathetic, 2m away from the router and speed was around 2-3MB/s... This is on rather expensive D-Link router [DIR-825, £90+] and even more expensive wireless card [DWA-160, £40+]

Homeplugs are such a neat solution and work really well, no drops, interference, multiple networks around you and all this mess.

seems like they are getting up to pretty decent speeds now, how many of these things do you need to wire up 2 permanent PCs back to the router? Does it work on a 1 to 1 bases or can you wire just one from the router and have one for each PC

[spoon_]

You need to least two to get started, one should be connected to the wall soocket and your router, then you add them in increments of 1 per device you want to connect. In your case two PCs on home plugs would require 3 plugs total (one each for the two PCs you have and one to bridge the mains and hard wired network)

[Biscuit]

So there must be a little bit of routing withing the homeplug itself then?

Do the homeplug devices need their own IPs

[spoon_]

So there must be a little bit of routing withing the homeplug itself then?

Homeplugs basically extend your wired network by using mains wiring in your house, the first homeplug you ever plug in needs to somehow talk to your wired network - almost like a bridge.



You simply plug it to the wall and to your router. Next one can "pop out" from any mains socket in your house and provide you with the network connectivity all the way back to your router. Its like a very long CAT5 cable going back but the signal travels using main wiring.

Do the homeplug devices need their own IPs

The do not. You simply plug them in, there is almost no configuration to be done but it can be if you want to encrypt the traffic etc.

Good video explaining how they work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyPNH...eature=related