Help me build a "serious" home LAN

[enewmen]

Hi all.

Not sure is this is the best area to post (there's no "newbe" area).
I'm a professional programmer, but I want to learn how to build a "serious" home LAN - ready for the 21st centry!

This includes gigabit wired and wireless networking, VPN server & client, using a bridge, NAS, HD video & audio streaming from the NAS to the big LED TV and to the mobile devices, WAN, LAN, & NAS security, connecting the xBox to all the network resources, FULL parental control, performance tweeking, etc etc.

All this may be too much for one thread, so any books or links will be helpful.
What are all the basic "parts" will I need for this kind of setup?

thanks!

 

[nexusN]

Hi all.

Not sure is this is the best area to post (there's no "newbe" area).
I'm a professional programmer, but I want to learn how to build a "serious" home LAN - ready for the 21st centry!

This includes gigabit wired and wireless networking, VPN server & client, using a bridge, NAS, HD video & audio streaming from the NAS to the big LED TV and to the mobile devices, WAN, LAN, & NAS security, connecting the xBox to all the network resources, FULL parental control, performance tweeking, etc etc.

All this may be too much for one thread, so any books or links will be helpful.
What are all the basic "parts" will I need for this kind of setup?

thanks!

A serious yet affordable option would be a x86 router running pfsense.
You may take a look at my configuration which can handle 1Gbps+ NAT throughput tested using iperf:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,45439.0.html
You may read more about pfsense, it is a well-developed router operating system that has lots of built in functions which should suffice your need.
The performance is scaled with CPU clock freq(assuming similar IPC), I am not sure if it also benefits from more cores.

For the wireless part, regrettably the current stable build of pfsense(2.0.1) has only little support(mainly due to being FreeBSD based), however you may simply use a wireless access point to allow it.