I’ve been working with technology for over 20 years. I’ve seen a lot of things evolve from BBS’s to logging on at 2400 baud. Yes, I used Prodigy.
Just recently I looked around the house and said, “Everything is running very smooth. No hiccups”. I can finally record HD TV, backup all of our PC’s, stream internet radio or music in the kitchen and surf wireless for anywhere around our residence.
So, I took stock of what hardware we use in the house to make Stang-Net run. I was amazed at what I found.
SERVICE: Cablevision Optonline - w/ Speedboost – No problems here. It just works.
ROUTER: I've had others. Linksys couldn't cut torrrenting. Then I moved to a D-Link DGL 4300 gaming router. That was really nice for a while, but when "N" wireless came out, I wanted to move on. The Dlink served us well. Torrents really fine. Then we tried the Buffalo "N" 150 w/ DDWRT. The wireless was decent. I had to add an extra Access Point in the house. So I currently moved up to the awesome and powerful Netgear N900 - No wireless issues in that house at all - 4 Gigabit ports in the back as 10/100 will not cut it soon with broadband reaching 100 down w/ Optimum Ultimate.
With smartphones, tablets, PC’s and laptops in the house, you need something decent to push the data around and keep everyone happy. Plus with the WNDR450, I did away with wireless access points. It’s that good.
I have 14 devices in the house: 2 computers, 2 laptops, 1 tablet, 1 e-reader, 1 wireless printer, 3 smartphones, 1 router, 1 DVR, 1 XBox and 1 streaming audio box. That’s a lot for 3 people. In other words, get an “N” router. You’ll need the speed.
Netgear WNDR4500 (N900) Specs about $180.00
SWITCH: Cisco 10/100/1000 Gigabit - Unmanaged - About $200 SG 100-16. There are cheaper Gigabit switches out there, but we order these at Dataserv for clients. They just work. I used this to connect all the rooms in the house which was rewired during our addition about 6 years ago.
SERVER: HP's MicroServer with the AMD Turion II Neo 1.5GHz and 4GB DDR3 – Plenty powerful for sharing files, pushing 2gb movies to my Win7 Media Center PC over Gigabit. About $ 350. Very quiet and energy efficient 150W Power.
4 x 2TB Seagate harddrives of which 2 are RAID1 using the AMD on-board RAID. The 3rd is used for PC Backups, the 4th is used to back-up the RAID critical data such as family photos, music, and documents About $ 120 ea. I’m thinking of using Amazon EC2 cloud backup for off-site backup of the photos.
O/S: Windows 2011 Home Server – from Microsoft - The feature set is really nice for a home o/s at less than $60. Whole house computer backup. Media sharing. Remote access.
Remote access is easily setup thru the Remote Wizard. Microsoft gives you a free SSL Certificate when you pick your personal domain for remote access. Just port forward 443 to your home server IP. Make your home server IP static or reserve the DHCP IP address. I love this box.
HiDef TV RECORDER: HD HomeRun Prime - 3 Tuner version. About $199 This product is awesome! We can watch TV and record 2 shows or 3 people can watch TV at the same time on any PC. This has been super. Works with Windows Media Center. Just run the software on each PC you want to watch TV on. A small issue you might run into on some routers is the software will not locate the tuner. If so, shut off UPnP in the router, and then rerun setup. We were fine after that. The Buffalo router with DDRT did not have any issues with this.
We purchased an Optimum cable card for $2 a month. Basically it’s like an old PCMCIA card (PC CARD) came home and slid it in the back of the HD Home Run Prime and ran the set up software which authorized us to view our subscription channels. A very easy procedure. Yes its iPad2 Compatible.
MEDIA PC: Win7 Home Premium 64Bit using Media Center with an i5-2310 4 cores, 6mb cache – Mainboard: Intel Mini ITX DH67CF w/ 7.1 Sound, Optical, HDMI, DVI & Display Port, 4GB RAM, 1TB Harddrive. I purchased the add-on My Channel Logos for a more visual appeal to the guide. The i5 is very responsive. No problems watching any HD content. Coupled to the 1TB HD, I have more recorded shows than I know what to do with. The case is an InWin Whisper Quiet Micro ATX Case 200w power. The Media PC is attached to a Sharp 52” thin profile LED TV. The Sharp shows a really nice picture.
HOUSE AUDIO: Logitech SqueezeBox – Had this for 3 years, runs great. I might upgrade to the new Logitech Touch, but so far the original has been working great. I have it tied to the HP Home Server, meaning you install the software on the server, which creates a browser (example 192.168.1.200:9000) and you can control the device anywhere in the house thru a browser. Android has a slick app for squeezebox. You can control the music, switch services from your phone.
I signed up for Sirius Internet Radio, Pandora, & Slacker Radio at mysqueezebox.com along with personal tunes on the Home Server and it stream thru the 4 ceiling speakers in the kitchen crystal clear. There’s even an Android App for your Squeezebox Player. All this runs thru an AudioSource 100 Amp and a Russound 10” sub-woofer giving us clean sound and extra boost when it’s party time
Well, that’s about it. Everything in this article was used because it just plain works, which can save you a lot of time, trial and error. If you have a Windows 7 house, use the Homegroup. It can’t be any easier to share files and media. Any questions, please leave a comment.
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The company, product and service names used in this web site are for identification purposes only. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owner.
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