Need some Network Advice

[gyrene2083]

Hello All,

Like a lot of folks I have managed, throughout the years to expand my home network, with the likes of either gaming consoles or laptops or pc's for the kids. Below you'll see an image of my setup with what I want to do.(The router and the Linksys are moved around as that's the way I would like to set it up.) My router is a Linksys WRT54G - running DD-WRT. I recently wanted to delve into actually hard wiring all my devices.

I wanted to actually build a router, I have read about pSense, and coyote Linux, I am presently playing around with unTangle, which I have to say I am having issues with it freezing. It's built on JetWay NC81. I have 2 gig Ram and I am using an sata 60 gig 2.5 harddrive, oh and a AMD+2 processor.

I suppose I am asking opinions on what route I should take. I wanted to keep the DD-WRT for the wifi capability for things like the PSP and iPhones. I mainly want to stream media @ home.

I hope I didn't lose anyone with my convoluted rambling, but I wanted your opinions. Another thing I am running Vista on most of the PC's and I was thinking of either adding WHS or Win2k8 for a File Server. Ok now I'm done.

Thanking you all in advance,

Edited August 21, 2009 by gyrene2083

[tain]

If your main goal is media streaming then you might want to consider upgrading your router as it won't go faster than 100mbps wired and 54mbps wireless. You can probably stream 720p as long as your environment isn't too noisy but that would be your bottleneck. Good job on the planning!

[gyrene2083]

tain,

Thank you for the advice. I have cat 6 cable I am going to laydown, and I have a Dlink gig switch. I do have the jetway that has dual gig nics, and I have tried Untangle but it constantly froze. So, I was thinking psense as I have read a bit on it and keeping the linksys (that has ddwrt) and using it like a bridge for wifi devices in the house. Any thoughts or opinions on that?

[rendrag]

if you can get the jetway working, then using the linksys as a wifi access point only would be fine. I have a similar setup (but not as many total computers) here. The only difference is the DIY NAS was replaced by a Synology DS209j with 2x 1TB hard drives in a RAID 1. I just couldn't beat the power consumption or interface.

Edited August 22, 2009 by rendrag

[gyrene2083]

rendrag,

So, you think psense would be the way to go regarding a router OS? Regarding the total amount of computers, it just seemed throughout the years with the kids getting older, and with the gaming consoles and them wanting their own pc's my collection just grew. lol

[rendrag]

the pfsense box is certainly going to be more powerful and have many more configuration options compared to any consumer grade device. If you can get it working, there's no reason not to use it, especially if you feel you need or want that level of control over every aspect of traffic coming in our going out of your network.

Edited August 24, 2009 by rendrag