Some Tips On Home Networking

A while back, I was chatting with a friend as he was renovating his place and would like to setup his home network (or internet enabled/ multimedia/ high definition/ 3D entertainment center). This eventually became lots of emails exchanged over a period of one and a half year.

Given this background, I have pieced together some tips and information as a reference for those who are interested:


Connection Medium
For home networking, the purpose of any connection is to create a common LAN (Local Area Network) segment. All devices (e.g. laptop, igadgets, alarm clocks) that are connected to the same segment can "speak" to each other. 


1. The most popular connection medium is copper, also known as Cat6. Theoretically supports up to 10Gbps throughput, it depends on the device(s) you are connected to. 
Also, keep in mind the maximum reach is 100m


2. Network over Power leverages your existing electricity connection to extend the reach of Cat 6. Be sure to check the speed supported by the connection interface. For example, if it says 10/100 that means it supports either 10Mbps or 100Mbps.


3. Wireless connection WiFi, or 802.11a/b/g/n with "G" supporting up to 54Mbps (actually 22Mbps in reality due to interference, or half-duplex behavior for the geeks) and "N" is the latest standard supporting up to 300Mbps in theory. 


4. Did you know that there are ethernet/ coaxial cable adapters available in the market? 


On Wireless
- For wireless, ensure your laptop and access point actually have the same mode (g/n) configured. A real story, a friend was complaining about his latest 802.11n laptop often taking awhile to connect to the internet, it turned out his AP supported only 11g and he was waiting for the laptop to "give up" on n and fallback to g. 


- Slightly more details, also be mindful of mixed mode of operation e.g. some devices support 802.11g while other 802.11n in the same Wireless LAN segment. While 802.11n standard has something known as Mixed Mode Format protection build in, for earlier standards e.g. 802.11b/g, mixed mode operation results in a "hit" in throughput performance (I do confess I have not had a chance to try this)


Data and Bandwidth
- Is the data going to stay within your home? For example, is the connection dedicated to streaming HD videos from the NAS on the first floor to the media player on the second floor? Also, is it necessary to have a dedicated 1Gbps connection for internet access, if (say) your home has only DSL access which max at 12Mb/1Mb?


- By the way, it turns out only 10Mbps is required to stream HD video in theory, although real life experience showed even streaming mpeg-2 (dvd quality) over 802.11g shows pause every couple of minutes.


Storage and files access
- Today, most of the off-the-shelf NAS (Network Access Server) supports iTune, so the media files it store are accessible from your iPhone/Pad via wireless (on the same LAN segment).


- What if I want to access my storage while I am away? Do I have to setup dd-client for reverse DNS, security?
How about a simpler solution, have you tried using Dropbox? It is free and is supported on Windows/ Linux/ iOS/ Android... 


Basic Security tips
- Always, always upgrade device firmware when possible. 
- Have you setup your WPA2 authentication on the wireless network? 


What's next? 
- I keep hearing news about Apple TVs and Samsung, I mean, even Ubuntu is onto this... but personally I see more potential in this technology - imagine swiping the web browser from your smart phone onto your TV in real time just like the movie Iron Man 2.