Parallel Wireless Networks (and the setup thereof)

Phantasos

So I'm thinking about a potential extension of my current home network and wanted to get some criticism from people with more hands on experience then I do. So where better to go then the frc forums?

My current setup: Xbox, Wii, Tivo, Apple TV and 3 computers connected to linksys wrt54g. The apple tv is the latest addition to the network and I'm noticing some latency. Minor hiccups when streaming music mostly but enough to know I should never try video. I need more bandwith. I'm thinking of getting a new fancy N router (the apple tv has n built in), connecting the computer that has been serving most of the media via ethernet to the new router. Basically the overall structure will be something like this:

INTERNET -> N Router (apple tv [wireless] & media server [wired]) -> G Router (everything else)

The question I have is if I disable DHCP on the G router, basically turning it into a glorified wireless switch, and connect that to the N router via ethernet, all devices on all network should still be able to talk to one another while still maintaining the highest speeds possible on the networks that need it. Right?

Thoughts? Flaws in my design? Any input would be great.

Apreche

Just to clarify, you are having problems streaming music locally? You are using that much bandwidth on the local network all at once? If that is the case, the answer is simple, do what we do.

Get something like this or this. Just a simple wired switch. Connect the uplink port on the wired switch to any one of the normal ports on the router. Then connect all your wired devices to the switch. No configurations are necessary. Just plug it in, and it will work. Your WRT54G can still handle the DHCP, internet, and wireless traffic. However, all traffic that goes from one wired device to another wired device will just go over the switch. If you're really using a shit-crazy amount of local bandwidth, then you might need a more badass wired switch than those I linked.

Phantasos

Yeah, the hiccups have happened while streaming from a computer to the apple tv wirelessly. Granted, this happened while I was downloading some pretty huge files, but my internet connection is only ~1.5 max, I should have plenty of overhead to play with.

I've got a wired switch and about 300' of cable. I just don't want wires running from the cable box, across the room to the tv. Or rather I might not care as much but the roommate would have more of an issue.

I don't know why I've been having the latency issues I noted. There should be enough bandwith with a g network. Tonight I may experiment with disconnecting things to see if they're throttling it down (does the wii have b or g?). I was just killing time while rebuilding a machine at work perusing amazon and considering purchases and got the parallel network idea going.

Apreche

Oh, you're using wireless with everything. That's going to be your problem. If you use wires, all your problems will probably go away. If you want to keep using wireless though, here is what you have to figure out.

First off, I don't know if the Wii is b or g. But the way things work, if any device using the wireless is b, they are all b. If I come to your house with your g access point, and use my b laptop, all of your g devices are going to switch to b. A good way to see if any devices are using b is to switch your router to use g only. Your b devices should fail to connect.

If you want to keep wireless, another solution is to get an extra wireless access point. Not a router, just an access point. Something like this. Think of it exactly the same way as you would think about a wired switch, except wireless. You just configure it with the normal wireless stuff, WPA, etc. and it will basically just provide another way to wirelessly connect to your network. So someone who comes into your house with a laptop will actually see two wirelesses, but they will both connect to the same network. Just make sure you run them on separate channels.

Phantasos

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I want to do with they Linksys and then use the new N router as the actual gateway to the internet and dedicated to high speed traffic. I just wanted to make sure that even though one laptop may be connected through the access point and another may be connected through the N router that they'd still see one another on the network and be able to share resources. From what you're saying that sounds like the case.

Thanks Scott.