This is only tangentially related to unRAID, but I'm... well, not yet desperate, but certainly eager for advice. I've just moved from a 5,500 sq. ft. house in Ohio that I built to a 2,300 sq. ft. rental in NY. The house in Ohio had ethernet jacks everywhere, an equipment closet for my two racks of gear and a distributed A/V system. The rental has a WEP "secured" wireless network, no footage available for dedicated space and I doubt I would have time or be able to pull wire even if the very nice landlords were willing to let me. I'm trying not to whimper every time I think about it, frankly...

 

And so the basic question is, what's the best way for me set this up to distribute A/V, connect with my desktops, Skype with friends and family we left and generally try to return to a state I'd consider normal? I have several TVs, an unRAID box storing music and video, an XBMC box I'm building/experimenting with, a Netgear EVA9100 that my wife would like back and several desktops scattered around for kids and myself. I no longer have a video matrix or Control4, but was hoping to at least be able to get the unRAID shares, uh, shared. Simultaneous streams would be nice, but not critical.

 

My initial plan was to just buy a -N wireless router, adapters for all the boxes and call it good (enough). This wouldn't really help with the EVA9100, although there is an apparently troublesome dongle for wireless connections. I then thought about buying a couple/few routers and use them as access points with anything close enough connecting to a ethernet port on the router/access point. This seems like it would be cheaper and less of a set up issue, but I have no idea how well this might work or even if it's feasible. Wireless access has never been a priority for me until now.

 

To summarize, I can't move back to Ohio and I can't pull wire where I am. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

Depending on bitrate, a single error free video stream over wireless can be challenging - multiple I don't see happening.  While I've never used them personally, PowerLine systems like this - http://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-XAVB101-Powerline-Ethernet-Adapter/dp/B001AGM2VI should give you more bandwidth than wireless, but as you can see they are rather pricey.

 

Couple of questions:

 

1) how long are you going to be in the rental?

2) how many machines / network devices are we talking about in total?  How many are on the same floor / how far apart are they?

3) What's the flooring in the rental, carpet or hardwoods / tile?

 

If any way possible, I'd make an attempt to hardwire the unraid server, xbmc and any desktops that might be used for video.  If there's a lot of carpeting, you may be able to lay / shove the CAT6 cable in the gap that typically exists at the carpet edge.  Particularly if you go with a flat cable like this - http://www.vpi.us/cable-sf-cat6.html

 

If your stay there is relatively short (< 6 months) or there's no way to hide the wire, then I guess I'd suffer with the wireless -N.  Concerning the PowerLine adapters, you may want to see if there are any local stores with liberal return policies that carry them (Walmart, Target, etc) so you could try them out and if the speed sucks, return them.

The PowerLine (and equivalents) I considered briefly... thing is, I'm not real confident in the house's wiring. I've counted (in the three days we've been here) six different types of single outlets, three in one room alone. That suggests to me either a schizophrenic electrician or multiple changes over time. I haven't researched the network-over-power even remotely thoroughly, but that doesn't seem like an ideal environment. Of course, I'm clearly choosing from amongst many non-ideal solutions here!

 

To answer your questions:

1) About two years.

2) Huh. If I'm remembering what I brought along instead of storing, three desktops, wife's Mac (which she's happily connected to the WEP network), XBMC box, unRAID box, EVA9100, XBox360/Wii... I think that's it. Possibly also something slingbox-ish for tune distribution, but I haven't looked for a solution for that, figuring the infrastructure had to get nailed down first.

3) All hardwood and tile, unfortunately... I've used something similar to that cable you linked at a friend's house before and while it worked like a charm there (his wife couldn't tell we had installed it), there's just no way I can make that work. I forgot to mention we've also got three kids under six. They're all well-behaved, but that's relative. The 17 month old can't be trusted!

 

Thanks for the suggestions... the idea of using Walmart as a testing partner hadn't occurred to me. I'll have to see what I can find that's somewhat local. It's astonishing to me what passes for normal here.

If the house is already wired with COAX Cable (RG6) then you could also look into using Ethernet-over-coax adapters. There's several providers available from DLink or Netgear. The favored internet-DIY method is to pickup some used Actiontec Ether-Over-Coax adapters from eBay for $40 a piece. The adapters are said to offer anywhere from 170mbit/s to 270mbit/sec. They're used to bridge ethernet switches/routers together by multiplexing the data from their single ethernet port into a signal carried over the coax wire, then demultiplexing it on the other side.

If the house is already wired with COAX Cable (RG6) then you could also look into using Ethernet-over-coax adapters. There's several providers available from DLink or Netgear. The favored internet-DIY method is to pickup some used Actiontec Ether-Over-Coax adapters from eBay for $40 a piece. The adapters are said to offer anywhere from 170mbit/s to 270mbit/sec. They're used to bridge ethernet switches/routers together by multiplexing the data from their single ethernet port into a signal carried over the coax wire, then demultiplexing it on the other side.

 

That's interesting... there are coax terminations in quite a few of the places I would need, I think. I'll research more on my own, but would you know if they're capable of handling both networking and video distribution (via a splitter of some variety)?

 

EDIT: Well, other than the price, this seems a better idea than hoping the wiring in this house will handle PowerLine gear. I'd like to know why it's not compatible with satellite TV, but thanks for the info!

They typically multiplex the signal into an unused spectrum, so both video and networking streams over the same coax run. Some of the Ethernet-over-coax have a COAX Output, so it feeds in-line with your video signal. Some do not so you'd likely have to use a 2-way coax splitter to feed the adapter and your video equipment.

Not sure anyone is interested, but based on the condition of the coax I could see, I decided to try the PowerLine solution. While I would have paid more for the Netgear AV+ 500 adapters, they're apparently not actually out, even though the Netgear site has them listed. I bought a pair of AV+ 200 adapters and plugged them in. While I don't yet have a way to test the speeds on the internal network, speakeasy.net's speed test shows 30Mbps down, 20Mbps up. Which is clearly good. I'm planning on ordering another pair to hook up the unRAID and XBMC boxes, so I'll hopefully be able to report on internal speeds soon. And, y'know, watch a movie or two.

 

Anyone have any suggestions on a simple four port hub for connecting a variety of devices to one of the adapters, while I'm asking?

Do not use network hubs, use a switch. I don't think they even make hubs anymore. Plug the Powerlan Network port into the Network Switch via an ethernet cable.

Well, I'm confused. I've got the unRAID box back up and running (yay for no obvious moving damage) and on the network via PowerLine. I tried a couple of movies, which worked fine, but HD rips are pausing every 3-5 seconds for at least five seconds. I assumed the connection was the issue.

 

I fired up LAN Speed Test and ran it a couple of times as a preliminary step. With a 100Mb file, 16Mbps write, 33Mbps read. That's obviously not enough to pull multiple HD streams, but surely enough to have it play back better than what I'm seeing.

 

I wondered if it might be the file size and ran it again with a 1000Mb file... and then it got very odd. 36Mbps write, 33Mbps read. Now regardless of what size file I try, I see 30-36Mbps writes and 32-33Mbps reads consistently.

 

Anyone have either an explanation for the write/read speeds and/or a suggestion on why I'm seeing so much trouble with a HD movie? Y'know, other than offering to run wire with me?

packets getting garbled, and needing to be retransmitted? maybe something along those lines could be your issue? ie you may be getting 36Mbs, but if it has to retransmit every other packet that could be a problem...

any way to check signal quality along with quantity?

 

edit: NY is a nasty place, just move back to Ohio? might be easier/better in the long run...

 

packets getting garbled, and needing to be retransmitted? maybe something along those lines could be your issue? ie you may be getting 36Mbs, but if it has to retransmit every other packet that could be a problem...

any way to check signal quality along with quantity?

 

edit: NY is a nasty place, just move back to Ohio? might be easier/better in the long run...

 

 

I've never had to worry about quality before, so... no idea what or even if there's a standard operating procedure for doing so is. And if Ohio was an option, I'd be gone. Or practically any other state for that matter.

 

Anyhoo... thanks!

yea, usually noise isn't an issue with wired Ethernet...

but I would imagine power lines can be noisy... may work just fine with data, since it can and will just re-xmit as needed, but if you are trying to actually watch something that could be an issue if too many bad packets came in to close to each other...

 

As a reference point, I use wireless N to stream full Bluray rips without drop-outs or pauses. I think it's a necessity to get a 5 Ghz capable router and receiver, however, as the 2.4 Ghz band often has too much interference to reliably stream a high bit rate. I've never checked read speed directly but write speed over the connection is typically 80-100 Mbps. I only have one media device so I'm not sure if 2 Blurays would reliably stream from the same router.

 

The big problem with 5 Ghz is the weak signal. Fortunately I'm only transmitting about 30 feet with no obstructions so my connection is good. I'm sure walls, floors or just a long distance would cut that signal strength substantially -- perhaps to the point that Blurays wouldn't reliably stream. If you need to transmit a long distance 2.4 Ghz N might be a more reliable option but I'd be worried about intermittent drop-outs from other devices using that band. Unfortunately, you'd probably have to try it in your particular location to know for sure. There are various signal boosters and antennas available which also might help but I have no personal experience.