upgrading my home network wired/wireless capabilities

[naelq]

hello all,
i'm thinking about upgrading my home network to faster (hopefully) wifi 802.11n but need some advice(s). right now i can't decide which route to go, since i already have my own server/firewall/NAS with a 100Mbps switch & an old 3Com OfficeConnect routing serving as an AP. (it sucks as a router, but i was surprised by it's performance as an AP speed/connection -wise)

anyway, i'm thinking of upgrading the whole network setup, both the wired & wireless connections since i'll be adding a MythTV box soon, my brother's new laptop & his new Photoshop/AutoCAD workstation.

wired:
1. is a 1Gbps connection worth the effort? will i have a notiable gain transfering large files? (+1GB ones)
2. what happends if i connect a 100Mbps device to a 1Gbps network? will it downgrade the speed of the other 1Gbps ones attached?

wireless:
1. what to do? get a 802.11n router & have it in AP mode? get a 802.11n PCI wifi card & extend my server? (i would prefere that option is possible)
2. any known to work 802.11n PCI cards that support AP mode?
3. are you getting decent 802.11n speeds or not yet?



thanks all,
Nael
_________________
main: Intel Xeon x3440 / Intel S3420GPLC / 6x 2GB DDR3 ECC REG / nVIDIA G210 / 3x 250GB AAKS || 2x 1TB FALS / Audigy 2 ZS / PCP&C 610w
laptop: Apple MacBook White T7200 / 2GB / 30GB Vertix

[NeddySeagoon]

naelq,

1Gbit network cards fitted to a 33MHz 32bit PCI slot are a waste of money.
On their own, they can saturate the PCI bus and they are never alone. You might find your disk controller on the same PCI bus, thus data needs to flow over the same PCI bus twice to get from your drive to the network card.
If your 1Gbit network link is on the motherboard, it will be faster but I guess you are not getting new motherboards.

Using a 100Mbit card on an otherwise 1G network that uses a switch will cause the switch to do data buffering and speed translation.
Only the 100MHz leg will operate at 100MHz. I don't know of any 1G hubs, so its likely you will be OK.

Be aware that wireless is always half duplex - data flows in only one direction at a time and the advertised data rate is shared by all devices on the network. Its actually slower than that as the AP has to manage the network too. Given the need for speed, wireless is a bad idea at all.
I don't have any 802.11n devices yet.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[naelq]

1st of all, thank you very much for the replay

ok, so it seems that i'll stick with 802.11G (the current 3Com router acting as an AP) for the "mobiles"
now to the wired thing, to be honest i'm soo confused about what to do with the "server", more specific, what hardware to use?

option 1:
hardware i have: (spare! )
*. 3x AthlonXP SocketA CPU's with 2x nForce2 & 1x KT600 based MoBo's
*. 1x 2.8GHz P4 478 (Northwood) with a 865P based MoBo
*. 1x 3.0GHz P4 775 (Prescott) with a 915PG based MoBo (DELL GX280 SSF)
*. lots of RAM

so i think that i can do some fine server/NAS system out of it, BUT what about power? (which is noise/heat/$$$) & don't forget, an HTPC should be added soon..

option 2:
forget about the spare hardware above, maybe sell it, & go for an up-to-date C2D rig serving as:
1. HTPC
2. firewall/gateway (router)
3. NAS
the C2D's power consumption when bundled with the new P45/G45 chipset along with cpu freq scaling can be lowered nicely

option 3:
going the "dark" ITX (pico/nano/mini) route for the server,(VIA embedded/AMD Geode/Intel Atom) but would it be adequate for a NAS? (most probably no!) & adding an HTPC... i think this option goes on-par with option-2 regarding power consumption..

& i think that all i need is x1 100Mbps NIC (for the cable internet connection) & x1 1Gbps NIC for the LAN along with a 1Gbps switch. what do you think? maybe you have another option(s) i didn't consider?

PS, why i'm talking about HTPC? simply because it will be the main consumer of the LAN!
_________________
main: Intel Xeon x3440 / Intel S3420GPLC / 6x 2GB DDR3 ECC REG / nVIDIA G210 / 3x 250GB AAKS || 2x 1TB FALS / Audigy 2 ZS / PCP&C 610w
laptop: Apple MacBook White T7200 / 2GB / 30GB Vertix

[NeddySeagoon]

naelq,

A fanless anything has plenty of power for a server. It only moves data around which is no CPU intensive.
To read/write a disk, the CPU sets up the DMA engine and sits back. The same is true of network transfers.

I use a k6-2 450MHx based server, only because I have it and I would need to buy a smaller lower power device.
If you want to use anything above software raid1 in the server, these low power fanless systems may struggle to calculate/check the redundant data, otherwise they are more than adequate.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.