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Forum Discussion
Installing an entirely new home network and need a review of my idea
Our street is getting wired cable from a major provider so I want to upgrade from DSL to cable internet which would be a big speed upgrade. We have a typical Florida single level mid-sized concrete block house built in the 2000s with a second concrete block garage which has my office and a bigger separate area for my hobby stuff. Right now the DSL terminates in the garage office as the previous owner pulled out the house telephone service and moved it to a single outlet in the office - have no idea why but that's the way it is. The cable vendor will no longer do a pulls down walls due to liability and I really can't put the cable into my office since it's now surrounded by concrete. The only apparent choice is to bring the cable into the front of the house into the front room which is fine with the CEO. We now use a combination of an antenna for broadcast channels, streaming for the regular channels and would like to do 4K TV.
Right now my network is the DSL modem feeding an very old router running the vendor's last firmware and then feeding a router running DD-WRT with our wireless network. The house gets its internet from a DD-WRT repeater bridge. As a retired IT guy I have a number of computers and network printers that we use as well as other devices. This layered approach has worked well so far and with three different types of firmware is likely difficult for hackers to penetrate.
The cable vendor supports only a small number of user owned modems and they prefer Arris so I thought that would be an Arris SBG6700AC which has WiFi but initially will be turned off. To get to the first new layered router in the living room from the front room I thought the Netgear PLW1010-100NAS would be a good choice as the cable speed will likely only be 25 Mbps (maybe 50 later) – I estimate the total copper wiring distance to be about 120 feet and on two different breakers. The new layered router with WiFI turned on would then connect to the streaming TV box and another Netgear PLW1010-100NAS with the “slave” in my office. There is probably about 100 feet of wiring between the breaker panel and the garage and about 60 feet between house outlet and the panel.
Haven’t decided yet on the new wireless router but I do want something with reasonable range. Obviouls I’m going from 3 layers to 2 layers but they will be new which hopefully means better firmware. The biggest question revolve around using these two sets of HomePlug devices. What problems am I likely to encounter with my unique topology? Any other helpful suggestions would also be welcomed.
5 Replies
- I may have missed something – a lot of that information does not seem to be relevant – but if your current network does the job, can't you just use the new modem as the front end for the existing hardware? Maybe a new router with more modern specifications.
Perhaps a briefer explanation, leaving out details that don't matter (bricks and previous owners) might paint a clearer picture for people.
After 50 years (not a typo) in computers I find it helpful to provide a good overview of the situation. Hence items such as copper wire, concrete blocks, two buildings and the like. I could reuse my 10 year old equipment but I think modern day threats need modern day solutions. As an additional point I typically never designed or installed business networks that had all of the equipment from one manufacturer to reduce the probability of infiltration due to "hackers" finding a vulnerability that would be present in all of the equipment from the same company.
Back to the initial subject. I have no experience with PowerLine and am concerned based the posts of others that the distances and the multiple circuit breakers might cause a problem. I'm also looking for a general critique of my design.
As we say in Florida: later alligator.
solidsolutions wrote:
After 50 years (not a typo) in computers ...
Me too. Coding in Fortran.
solidsolutions wrote:
I have no experience with PowerLine and am concerned based the posts of others that the distances and the multiple circuit breakers might cause a problem.Had your first message stuck to that simple question, we would all have been better prepared to cut to the chase.
The distances you mention "120 feet" are not abnormal for Powerline but may be on the edge. It all depends on the local wiring. Is that straight line or the length of the wires?
Talk of "two different breakers" is kind of vague. Are they on the same mains circuit, feeding off one feed from the power company? Do you expect Powerline to leap both "breakers"?
I have used Powerline to bridge breakers. It works but there is a speed drop. Then again, the internet speeds you are talking about, 25 Mbps, are far slower than the PLW1010 can handle.
I haven't tried Powerline on a slow internet link and don't know if the speed hit would clobber the internet speeds rather than local speeds. I have 75 Mbps and can lose a half of that over the breakers, although this is using a truly complicated mix of Powerline, access points and wifi extenders. (I get to play with all manner of toys.)
You mention the PLW1010, which is a wifi plug. The only reference I can see to wifi in your first messages talks about an unnamed "streaming TV box". If that has wired LAN, I'd avoid using wifi. I use Powerline for anything that can do wired LAN, smart BluRay player, internet radio.
(Good luck getting all that to work with 25 Mbps internet.)
Again, picking through those piles of confusing detail, I see mention of "another Netgear PLW1010-100NAS with the “slave” in my office". Does that mean you plan to two separate networks based on Netgear PLW1010s?
Heaven only knows what you mean by this bit:
they will be new which hopefully means better firmware
What has firmware got to do with anything?
Forget about firmware. You need newer hardware, with better wifi performance, higher speeds and longer range, among other things.
