Need to upgrade home network to high speed

[Frosty81]

I am building a new network for my parents. The home environment is a 3 story condo set up. I'm figuring 1 router per floor. I'm looking for high speed wifi data transfer ability. They will have a media server in the basement with media centers at two TV's on the first floor. In the loft will be a media back up pc. They rip all of their blurays (legally back up purchased copies) in the loft and would like to be able to send them wireless to the media server in the basement. These are full copies so the file size ranges from 15-35GB. Being able to get those across the network quickly would be nice. What speeds would be realistically possible in this scenario? They also require some high bandwidth for when they watch movies on more than one media center at a time as the movies bit rates go as high as 45 Mb\s. The current set up with some buffalo WZR HP G450H routers just barely handles the movie streaming and allows no over head for normal network traffic.

I tried a couple of Asus AC87U routers but could never get the 5GHz channels to connect in media bridge mode and Asus tech support was nothing less than atrocious so I returned them. The plan is to have a router at the media server, one media center and the media backup station, all hard wired to each router for best throughput. We will use one of the existing Buffalo routers for the second media center on the first floor.

Did I have a bad batch of ac87u's? Is it just that the current firmware has them messed up and in the nearish future those might be a good solution? Am I crazy thinking any residential levelrouter setup will do what I would like to do? Should I be setting up all of these routers as AP's aside from the internet in router? Would I be better off with the central router being a router and the others all being in a media bridge setup where compatible? I would like to think the new AC wifi should be able to handily beat the transfer speeds of my Buffalo N routers.

A few options I am reading up on are the Netgear r8000 and R7000, Linksys 1900ac and the Asus RT-AC68R. I would like to keep the router choices under $300 and if they are even cheaper thats all the better.

Any and all advice is welcome. If something isn't quite clear in my long rambling let me know and I'll try to clean it up a bit. Thanks in advance.

 

[stevech]

Cat5 or better.
Want high speed? Use wire.

Wireless is always slow/slower. Flaky. Needed for mobile/handheld devices. Not prudent for immobile things.

Can't run cat5? Try really hard to do so.
Still can't?
Use MoCA (IP over existing TV coax), or
HomePlug/HPNA.
See forum section of that name.

Sorry to be a bit flippant, but with heavy video file moving and so on, WiFi just doesn't cut it.

 

[Frosty81]

No need to apologize. I came here for advice and will take what I can get, good or bad.

I have tried to get them to install a wired network but they refuse to take on that cost/project and unless there is some easy secret to running cable in a multistory home I am not skilled enough to do so either in a setup like they have.

I will read up about the other two options you mentioned and hopefully one of them will be a viable route for them.

Side note on the heavy file moving, transfer speeds of 30-50MB\s or so would be adequate if that is possible.

 

[RogerSC]

Second the recommendation for MoCA. I use it here, since we have cable TV coax in the walls but no ethernet cables. Very reliable but you're not going to get the speeds that you're looking for with it (240-400Mbps). I get about 85Mbps, but it is very reliable for streaming or long data transfers, much more so than wireless. Although wireless can be fast, it varies a lot in speed. The average transfer speed may be quicker using wireless-ac or even wireless-n, but you need sustained transfer speed for things like streaming. So something like MoCA or even powerline networking can give you better streaming performance than wireless.

The next generation of MoCA, MoCA 2.0, is much faster than what I'm currently getting (which is fast enough for my needs currently). I've been waiting for it to be easily commercially available for some time, but haven't see that happen. Haven't given up hope, though...hope springs eternal *smile*.

 

[azazel1024]

If you are looking at wirelessly bridging the 5GHz bands on the routers, YMMV, but I'd expect you could probably get between 20-40MB/sec between routers one floor apart. From upstairs to basement expect more like 5-20MB/sec.

Depends heavily on what is in the walls and floors and if the routers are horizontally close or not. If not fairly horizontally close, or there is a lot of obstruction because of duct work, plumbing, appliances, what not, expect as much as 10-100% slower on the bridges.

5GHz just doesn't have a heck of a lot of penetration. On an ideal 867Mbps link between my laptop and router I can get ~61MB/sec...but that is line of sight about 12ft away. Go the floor above and just a few feet horizontal and it drops to about 40MB/sec. Go about 20ft horizontal and it drops to about 16-20MB/sec. Go just a bit more horizontal and it drops to 2-3MB/sec. Performs takes a massive nose dive pretty quickly with 5GHz.

In a lot of ways, if you want to try to make this ideal, you might have to be looking at a couple of options here for links and wifi coverage if they can't or refuse to run wires. Ideally what you'll do is a dedicate router for a bridge on each floor. Then play with the ideal band to bridge and floor to bridge between. What you may find works best is to bridge the 1st floor router with the basement router on 5GHz and the upstairs router with the 1st floor router on 2.4GHz. So the 1st floor will act as a relay for upstairs. Then a seperate router actually providing wifi coverage to the floor it is on, set on channels seperate from what the bridged routers are operating on. This also allows you to orient the antennas on the bridges routers to get an ideal link, which is also likely not the ideal antenna orientation for providing actual wifi coverage on the floor it is on.

As for running wires, it depends on the home's construction. Finished basement and no duct work that you can run wiring through, it can be expensive to run a bunch. However, a lot of electricians, within reason, are only going to charge about $100-150 per LAN drop to run wire. So if you are looking at just putting in a couple of wires, 1 to each floor in a logical place for the router/AP in a media center, and maybe an extra one or two to a home office, it might only cost you $500. Which is roughly what it would cost for 3 "high end", or medium high end routers.

It isn't a many thousand dolar project.

 

[Frosty81]

RogerSC & stevech I did some reading up on some of the different options for using the power grid and those speeds are almost identical to my current speeds. I can manage 79Mb\s over the current routers so there is no real gain to spend money to go up 10 Mb\s.

azazel1024 Is that rough estimate what they charge to provide the cable as well as run it or just running it? I didn't realize it would be quite that cheap. The house has a loft that opens up over the living room. They have no attic and a finished basement with its own AC unit and all ducting for the basement is in the crawl space under the basement floor. So I don't know if those prices would still be reflective in a layout such as that or not. Though we had only talked about wiring up the house as an entirety and not just a few key spots which actually makes sense. This may end up being the route they go. At least I hope I can talk them into it and hope they have some good options for electricians.

Looks like they are going to talk to some people where they live and see if anyone has a good recommendation and if the prices are anywhere near the 100-150 range. I hope they are as this will make my job a whole lot easier!

 

[CaptainSTX]

Try to find an installer for wired security systems. I had an installer from Brinks that was able to pull wires to places I didn't think it could be done. (Exterior walls stuffed with fiberglass insulation etc. )

Brink's installers pulled wires for two keypads, three door sensors, two motion detectors, two smoke alarms and a garage door sensor. Not one wall needed patching or touch up painting.

It all comes down to having lots of experience and lots of specialized wall fishing tools. A steel fish tape just isn't enough.

 

[azazel1024]

Try to find an installer for wired security systems. I had an installer from Brinks that was able to pull wires to places I didn't think it could be done. (Exterior walls stuffed with fiberglass insulation etc. )

Brink's installers pulled wires for two keypads, three door sensors, two motion detectors, two smoke alarms and a garage door sensor. Not one wall needed patching or touch up painting.

It all comes down to having lots of experience and lots of specialized wall fishing tools. A steel fish tape just isn't enough.

Exactly. I have done installs for a number of people and they are always amazed at where and how I am able to run wires. True, sometimes it just is NOT possible to run a wire without having to patch walls, but generally there is a solution so long as the location of a drop is at least SOMEWHAT flexible (IE get it in the room, but anywhere in the room is fine for example).

The prices are probably going to vary a lot. I doubt you'd pay $100 for a single LAN drop, but if you had 10 put in, you might only pay $100 each as an example.

Never hurts to call a couple of electricians or security system installers and ask if they'll provide a free quote to put in, say, half a dozen drops or whatever it is. Worst they say is no.