My Home Network Setup - Think this will work?

[geogecko]

Well, since we have moved into our new house, the only network that currently exists in the house, is a Wireless-G router and Ethernet Extender going to the HTPC in the living room. Now that the HD Extender is coming out, I am thinking about changing everything, and just wanted to get some input.

I am also having some problems with the two FusionHDTV 5 Gold USB tuners that I have, and I'm not sure where the problem is coming from (probably installed something that caused it), however, I have been thinking about selling them, and just getting a HDHomeRun. With that said, this is what I was thinking about doing. My concern will be at the bottom of the initial network layout.

So, this is how I was thinking of structuring the network:

Study Location
Cox Incoming Broadband Internet, via Cable Modem
Cox Dual Tuner STB's, via Cable
D-Link DIR-855 Dual Band Wireless N Router
*Port 1 - HTPC
D-Link DAP-1555 Wireless N HD Media Bridge
*Port 1 - Study PC

Living Room Location
D-Link DAP-1555 Wireless N HD Media Bridge
*Port 1 - SageTV HD Extender
*Port 2 - HDHomeRun
*Port 3 - PS2

Bedroom Location
D-Link DAP-1555 Wireless N HD Media Bridge (?)
*Port 1 - SageTV HD Extender

Exercise (Game) Room Location
Buffalo Wireless G Ethernet Extender
*Port 1 - SageTV MVP

My concern comes from having the HDHomeRun on the same bridge as an HD Extender. If two shows were recording in HD on the HDHR, that would be about 38mbit/s, then whatever we were watching on the HD Extender. I guess that 270 or 300mbit/s would be able to handle that pretty easily. The reason the HDHR would be in the living room, is because I would then be able to use the coax in the living room for the antenna in the attic, without having to run wires. I cannot do this in the study, because the coax in there has to be hooked up for the cable modem and the STB's.

The locations in our bedroom and exercise room are going to be way out in the future, well, the exercise room could happen soon, because I already have everything for it, but in our bedroom, it may be a while before we go that route.

Do you all see any concerns? This just gets me out of running difficult wire in the house, or from not being able to run wire in some locations at all. I really don't like wireless, but have no other options.

[MeInMaui]

Do you all see any concerns? This just gets me out of running difficult wire in the house, or from not being able to run wire in some locations at all. I really don't like wireless, but have no other options.

Honestly, I think it is a trade off between running difficult wire now vs. doing difficult troubleshooting until you get fed up enough to run the difficult wire later. But having said that, I would put the HDHR at the server and hard wire it into a separate dedicated NIC. The rest might just work.

Aloha,
Mike

[GKusnick]

As an alternative to wireless, you might want to look at powerline Ethernet bridges along the lines of Netgear XE104 or similar.

[geogecko]

Well, Mike, you said that, and that is exactly what happened at my old house, but it was not as difficult as this will be at this house, two story, and most walls that need Ethernet are outside walls, and happen to be where the roof slopes down, so there are lots of things fighting me here, and in some places, making it impossible, unless I want to drill through the floor... That said, hopefully things have gotten better in the last 5 or so years, regarding wireless. I will NOT be buying Linksys, that's for sure.

As far as the powerline bridges go, my only concern there is if an Insteon network (pretty big network of probably around 25-30 devices) would cause problems to that type of solution?