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Home Network Upgrade Adventure.

edited December 2007 in Everything Else
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Having a RAID 5 file server on a gigabit network for all the computers in my house has been a dream of mine for a long time. In this video, I show you what I'm switching too and some of the issues that I ran into as I completed the upgrade.

The video is sadly dark and practically unwatchable. This does not prevent me from putting it on YouTube. The fact of the matter is that if you want to shoot good video (you know, with lighting) then you have to plan and prepare for that. It means work. It also helps to write what you're going to say instead of pointing a camera and just talking. I did not put any work into this and, well, it shows. Nonetheless, I suspect that computer geeks like me might enjoy it for what it is.

Finally, I learned something from this that's not in the video. Plugging in gigabit switches and routers doesn't give you gigabit transfer speeds out of the box. Windows, Linux and FreeNAS require substantial tweaking before you notice any improvements. This tweaking is not trivial and I'm still working on it.

Comments

  • edited December 2007
    Good video. I really want to go gigabit as well. I just built a MythTV box and I I think I will build a backend server for MythTV before I spend the money on the gigabit network. I also need to run more CAT5. I ran 5 CAT5 cables around my house before we finished the basement, I thought that would be enough... well it wasn't.

    Do you have a patch panel? I know you just finished a big project so that final shot may not show the finished product. If you don't you may want to look into it. It really helps to organize the cables.
    Post edited by am_dragon on
  • The thing about the gigabit cards and pipes so far is that the operating systems do not natively adjust. Sure, they show you the fancy connection rate, but then they send data at 100 mbps or below. Getting Windows to amp things up a bit requires a regedit!

    Patch panels you say? This is intriguing. To date, my solution for connections has just been more switches. The 16 port switch I swapped out was almost full.

    MythTV has always been intriguing to me. But I was a TiVo guy for years. I still have one for the kids and a crappy cable DVR for HD.
  • Patch panels don't really increase your capacity they just help you stay organized. All long runs to the "wire closet" terminate at the patch panel. Then you use, typically short, patch cords to run from the panel to the switch. When you label the patch panel this makes it very easy to know what goes where.

    Wow, I would have thought that Gigabit was totally plug and play. That's really surprising that it's not. We've had offices at work that have had gigabit for a couple years now and I didn't think it was a big deal.
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