The Home Network/Server Infrastructure Gallery..

[Sidewindr]

Show us your home server and network hardware :D

I'll start with some pics of my home infrastructure. :thumbsup:

3119
3120
3121

[Evman]

Wut. Is that where the forum lives?

[Davothegreat]

Wow, HP pre-G5 3.5" caddies, that stuff belongs in a museum! Don't go powering down those drives, they might not wake up again ;-)

I have my home comms gear vertically mounted in a wardrobe.

Top:

Watchguard Firebox x700 running pfSense
Netgear CG3000 cable modem (DOCSIS 3)

http://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i397/davothegreat/DSC_0928.jpg

Bottom:

Cisco SPA122 VoIP ATA
PoE adapter for one of my IP cameras
TPLink 16 port Gigabit switch
HDHomerun IPTV tuner

http://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i397/davothegreat/DSC_0927.jpg

Not pictured are my home server, wireless access point and Optus 3G Homezone femtocell which are in the lounge room and I have another IP camera in the garage but it runs off a plug pack rather than POE.

[macca_779]

My setup includes the following

Billion 7404VGPX Modem Router
Apple Time Capsule 802.11ac 2TB

http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i39/macca_779/2014-03-17203401_zpsd7c2a384.jpg

HP Pro Curve 16 port Gigabit switch

http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i39/macca_779/2014-03-17203459_zps24e143b6.jpg

WD MyBook World Edition 1TB NAS
Linksys SPA-3000 VOIP ATA

http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i39/macca_779/2014-03-17203408_zps952c8dbd.jpg

WD 3TB USB 3.0 HDD

http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i39/macca_779/2014-03-17203536_zpsd6ef5021.jpg

Elgato Netstream Dual DVB TV Tuner

http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i39/macca_779/2014-03-17203449_zps5e9b452d.jpg

Apple AirPort Express in Lounge Room
Apple AirPort Express in Garage via Netcomm Ethernet over Power 500mbps

This is how I used to have it setup before I got the Time Capsule.

http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i39/macca_779/null_zps34378c3d.jpg

[Sidewindr]

Wow, HP pre-G5 3.5" caddies, that stuff belongs in a museum! Don't go powering down those drives, they might not wake up again ;-)


It's not a HP actually it is a 16 bay, dual 800W PSU Supermicro chassis with an SAS/SATA intelligent backplane connected to 2 LSI PCIe3 8port SATA controlers :D

The rack is not where the forum lives, it is where the backups live but not the live server, it is a much beefier server and has a nice fat pipe into the SEA backbone in Singapore :D

The rack consists of ..
- 1x Intel based quad ported ethernet firewall (the green 1U Box at the top) running pfSense ;)
- 1x QNAP TS-859U-RP+ 8bay NAS serving 11TB (RAID6) of storage over a 2Gb uplink into the switch.
- 1x Intel based x64 Server with at present only 8 of 16 drive bays populated serving 18TB (RAID6) of storage over a 3Gb uplink into the switch.
- 1x SMC 24-port Gigabit Managed Switch
- 1x external 4bay USB3.0 and eSATA enclosure connected to both the NAS and Server for use as needed ;)
- 1x 1500VA APC Smart UPS

The actual rack is 15U tall and completely sealed with 6x120mm 240V exhaust fans in the top and a panel filtered air inlet at the bottom of the rear door to keep everything as clean as possible... :)

[macca_779]

Mmmmmm RAID 5. Very nice Sidey

[Sidewindr]

Mmmmmm RAID 5. Very nice Sidey


oops, I meant RAID6 .. typo :D It's basically RAID5 striping with 2 parity drives instead of 1. This is intended to guard against a second drive failure before the array can recover/rebuild if it has already suffered a drive failure and replacement.

[macca_779]

oops, I meant RAID6 .. typo :D It's basically RAID5 striping with 2 parity drives instead of 1. This is intended to guard against a second drive failure before the array can recover/rebuild if it has already suffered a drive failure and replacement.

Even better. One of these days I want to build a decent NAS with a good media server running plex or something similar that catalogs media and makes it pretty

Currently got the MyBook which runs a Twonky server. But it's pretty basic

[Sidewindr]

Even better. One of these days I want to build a decent NAS with a good media server running plex or something similar that catalogs media and makes it pretty

Currently got the MyBook which runs a Twonky server. But it's pretty basic


I simply use samba shares for TV/Movies etc .. and each TV and Stereo has a small form factor not too expensive (around $800) PC as a Home Theatre PC. I have an Acer Aspire X5900 connected to the living room TV and 7.1 HiFi via HDMI and optical and slightly cheaper Acer Aspire X3950 connected to the TV in the bedroom via HDMI. Both have their own Logitech K400R keyboard w/ integrated touch pad and dual boot Windows 7 and XBMC ... Check out XBMC if you want a catalogued media interface, you can run it as an application under windows like Windows Media Centre or as a linux boot dedicated appliance .. All my media is simply stored on samba shares under directories and XBMC does a wonderful job with both movies and TV shows..

FORGET TRANSCODING and DLNA TWONKY ETC .. My Sammy TV is a series 7 and has a built in media player with DLNA support and it is pathetic compared to the HTPC ;) ...

Next telly I buy will have a very HQ display and as few expense adding frills like network/internet/DLNA/media player built into it, a HTPC is a far better and more flexible option especially when it comes to codec support and compatibility.

[macca_779]

No ios app for XMBC Where plex does. Yeah I know apple crap

[Sidewindr]

No ios app for XMBC Where plex does. Yeah I know apple crap

There is an iOS port of XBMC and OSX etc. etc. http://xbmc.org/download/ .. alternatively you could just boot with an XBMCUbuntu USB Stick or CD ;)

[macca_779]

Yeah requires cydia though and I'm not jail breaking for one app

[Sidewindr]

Yeah requires cydia though and I'm not jail breaking for one app

I never watch anything on my phone. Sometimes on my Tablet (Android) but mostly on the couch in front of the TV with the HTPC doing what it does the best. :D

[macca_779]

I never watch anything on my phone. Sometimes on my Tablet (Android) but mostly on the couch in front of the TV with the HTPC doing what it does the best. :D

Yeah I don't use my phone. But I airplay to an Apple TV. Or use a ps3 for the lounge room

[Tre-Cool]

I would have a bunch of dell 2950 server's at home if it werent for the fact, they are dam loud.

How do you find the noise with your cabinet? is it in a seperate locked away room Sidey?

[Sidewindr]

The NAS has 3 hi-volume fans plus the 2 redundant PSU's each have a fan, the server has 6 hi-volume fans plus another fan for each of the 2 redundant PSU's as well. The rack has 6 240v 120mm exhaust fans in the top panel. However all the fans with the exception of the 6 exhaust fans which run at 100% all the time are variable speed based on system and device temperatures.

When it's first turned on all fans go 100% for about 5-10 seconds and it's loud with the cabinet open but then they slow and with the cabinet closed there is not lot of noise as the cabinet is sealed and 95% of the air drawn out of the exhaust fans must be drawn through a panel filter in the bottom of the rear door, this creates a low pressure zone inside the rack. This also has an effect of slowing and thus reducing the noise of the exhaust fans slightly as they load up due to the drag from the rear panel filter.

The rack sits in the corner of the office diagonally opposite my workstation and the room is only air conditioned (to 25degC) when I'm in the office working, The rest of the time the room just has the door open with the windows closed no air conditioning and a desk fan used to circulate the hot air out of the room into the hallway. The room is on the 3rd floor and the hallway has an open window at one end and a bathroom with an open window at the other end providing some cross ventilation depending on how much wind is blowing but it is usually quite calm. The rack and enclosed servers CPU temps rarely exceed 15-20degC above ambient and the hard drives across the board never get more than 1-2degC above ambient.

So not too shabby, we can have 40+degC temps here in Bangkok during the dry season.

[Davothegreat]

What would you do with a bunch of 2950s at home these days? I used to have a few of them here (not running anything important, just a "nerd up" lab) but nowadays a desktop i7 has more grunt than those old servers without the power bill or the noise. For important loads, obviously a different story. Then you'd be best to collect the 2950s, flog them on the bay and pick up something that's Nehalem or Westmere based and run half the number of servers to do the same workload.

[Sidewindr]

Or do what I did, I bought a supermicro bare metal chassis (http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/) with redundant PSU's etc. hot swap bays etc. and then build your own server.. :D

3127

Depending on the 2950 configurations seeing you already have them you might be able to re-purpose them by replacing the motherboard/cpu/ram etc. essentially stripping them down to bar chassis with PSU/Backplane and hot swap drive bays... I chose my particular server because I wanted at least 16 drive bays for to extend my home media library capacity .. ;)

[KeenGolfer]

I have a reasonable setup but it's nothing special to look at. Dual ADSL connections (one for work, one for play - wish I had NBN), an older quad core server with 4x 10,000 rpm drives in RAID10, 4 TB Synology NAS (8 TB in RAID 1), 16 port Netgear POE switch, 4x HD ip cameras, i5 media centre running Win7 with XBMC hooked to big screen TV with surround sound system + streaming Netflix etc. Coming today is a Pico M2 HP (thanks to another thread on here) to extend and strengthen the wireless range throughout the entire house.

[GR346]

Some very nice looking setups in here :D

Makes me want to spend money

[Davothegreat]

I wanted at least 16 drive bays for to extend my home media library capacity .. ;)

How big is your library? 4TB spindles are affordable nowadays so you could run close to 50TB there (factoring in parity, FS overhead and hot spare(s)).

[Stewge]

So many rack setups! :drool:
Wish I wasn't renting, don't even have cat5/6 patching at my place, nevermind somewhere to put my gear.

My setup is more "thrown together" than most due to everything being collaborated with my housemate (we own bits and pieces).
Here's some specs of what's running at my place though:

NBN 100/40 FTTP via iiNet (500GB+500GB) :dancenana:
Router: Mini-ITX (Antec ISK-110 case) i3-2130, Gigabyte dual-Gbit mobo, 120GB SSD, Wifi-N with high gain antennas as access point. Running ProxmoxVE (Hypervisor), PfSense 2.1 routing virtual machine.
"Server": Xeon E3 1230v2, 16GB ram, ProxmoxVE, 1 VM for web servers/ventrilo/mumble, 1VM for downloaders (sabnzbd, transmission torrent, sickbeard, couch potato, XBMC headless library)
Storage: 2x Hotway 4-bay RAID enclosures connected with eSata, both at around 60-70% capacity. One with 4x2TB in RAID5, one with 4x4TB in RAID5. One WD 2TB USB external as ad-hoc backups and storage of VM images in-case we need to build again (or for friends).
MediaPC: i5 4570K (possible water-cooling coming soon), 8GB DDR3, GTX 580 GPU, 120GB SSD, 2TB HDD (games), Windows 8 with XBMC and Steam big picture mode/launcher. Xbox360 controller for remote.
Other: 2 TP-Link gigabit desktop switches to run things. Belkin In-line/powerboard type ups (600VA)

+1 for supermicro chassis. They make some awesome gear, use them pretty much exclusively at work for servers and routers (we build our own based on pfsense or vyatta, rather than paying the cisco tax).

Recently acquired of these bad boys in as a low-power, small-footprint multi-purpose server:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/5018/SYS-5018A-MHN4.cfm

8-core Atom with quad-gigabit NIC with only 20W tdp! Runs ProxmoxVE hypervisor, vyatta core router VM, Scalix (Linux Exchange alternative) VM, Samba file-sharing (off 2x 4TB in RAID1), Windows 8 Pro VM as RDP environment in a pinch. All without breaking a sweat (on RAID1 SSDs primary drives which helps). It'll run an entire small business with <$2000 in hardware. Granted, ditching Exchange/SBS cuts hardware requirements significantly. For that money you could afford to have a 2nd as a complete spare in case of failure.
The new Rangely Atoms are surprisingly quick for their TDP. I'm increasingly looking at lower-tdp gear. Saves on power, lower cooling requirements (slower/quieter fans or completely passive), typically smaller chassis (can easily fit half-depth racks) and longer potential uptimes on UPS if power is cut. Unless you specifically need fast single-thread performance these things are great bang-for-buck.

[Sidewindr]

How big is your library? 4TB spindles are affordable nowadays so you could run close to 50TB there (factoring in parity, FS overhead and hot spare(s)).

Umm at present I have around 250 Separate TV Show Titles and 1,700 HD Movies and approximately 26,500 mp3's of music.. :D

The NAS has 11TB capacity and the server at present has around 18TB with 8 spare drive bays for future expansion. :D I will probably drop 8 4TB drives into the server in the next 6 months to fill all the bays which would add an additional 24TB to the farm .. :evil:


So many rack setups! :drool:
Wish I wasn't renting, don't even have cat5/6 patching at my place, nevermind somewhere to put my gear.

I am renting :D The trick is to try and not move house too often .. which suits me as I hate moving house.. :eeew:

Those 1U chassis look good .. didn't suit me as I needed bulk drive bays and backplane speed :D ;)

[Tre-Cool]

I've got a pretty simple setup at home, but I've been wanting to build a new esx server for a while and host a small play area.

At the moment I have more invested in expanding my network "reach" lol. So i have a netgear D6200 as the primary adsl modem/house wifi- which connects my office printer, desktops and netgear stora. Along with a nanostation m5 doing a 5.4ghz P2P link to another M5 on my shed. From there I have my old netgear adsl/wifi router rebroadcasting via the 2.4ghz range for internet access for my Phone and Dyno Computer which has a TPLINK AP.

Shed walls seem to block all the wireless signal from penetrating from the house so needed to do the hop/skip and jump.

.

[Black VU SS ute]

I've always been wanted to boost the wire range to get some more speed out of my 2.4ghz damn to many walls from my netgear 6300 wireless router.
I have a WD MyLive and MyCloud (3TB and 4TB) I got 161GB worth of music (31000 songs), 227 movies (hd and sd 400GB) and 1.47TB of tv shows series (5700 individual episodes). I had upgrade my old Telstra router as theit couldn't handle the hd video steaming to my smart tv, and random network drop outs.
Though I don't think I'll go as far as your setup Sidewinder.

[Sidewindr]

I've always been wanted to boost the wire range to get some more speed out of my 2.4ghz damn to many walls from my netgear 6300 wireless router.
I have a WD MyLive and MyCloud (3TB and 4TB) I got 161GB worth of music (31000 songs), 227 movies (hd and sd 400GB) and 1.47TB of tv shows series (5700 individual episodes). I had upgrade my old Telstra router as theit couldn't handle the hd video steaming to my smart tv, and random network drop outs.
Though I don't think I'll go as far as your setup Sidewinder.

I am in the process of building a live FullHD movie library (currently 1,700 movies) as a replacement for my old DVD collection (1100 DVD's) as well as all new stuff goes straight to live storage and no more static media! :) Many of the movies I have with really detailed CG are betwen 20Gb and 30Gb each (1080p w/ DTS-HD7.1 usually) I am only about 1/3rd of the way through replacing my DVD collection online. Still have a way to go :D

As far a TV goes there's around 74,000 individual episodes from around 250 separate show titles and a bunch of documentaries etc.

[Davothegreat]

I've got 155GB of music (31000 songs), 650GB of TV shows (3600 episodes), only 90GB of movies as I haven't bothered to rip any of our DVDs (not that there's that many of them, probably less than 50 titles plus box sets) and 135GB of photos (38000 images). Everything gets backed up onto one of two external drives that I rotate periodically, one lives at home, the other lives at work so I have an offsite copy of my data... encrypted of course. Couldn't care less about the music etc, it's the 5500 photos of my son that I don't want to lose.

Sidewindr, do you sync your data between the NAS and server or do you offsite the important stuff?

[Sidewindr]

Sidewindr, do you sync your data between the NAS and server or do you offsite the important stuff?

Nope, the arrays are RAID-6 and the samba file services utilise a trash can/recycle bin plugin that on deletion it moves the files to a hidden holding area and I have configured it to hold deleted items for 90 days before permanently deleting them.. I have a swag of 1.5TB drives which I am considering utilising as offline backup media as they are just collecting dust on the shelf these days :D ;)

[Davothegreat]

You'd be wise to utilise that swag of spare drives, otherwise if your array fails and manages to take the drives with it (think power spike or something) then you'll lose the lot.

[QldKev]

I'm going to replace my Netcomm nb6plus4wn router, and chasing recommendations.

I'll try and list everything about this one
I can connect at 22.6mb on ADSL 2+, stats below (you will see it dropped whilst typing this message). I'm on a RIM.
The ADSL connection drops out randomly. Some days it will drop multiple times, other days it's ok. This is the main issue why I'm looking at replacing it.
If I plug a double adapter into the pone line and run a second phone drop outs become worse.
At random times I cannot even connect to the routers interface, even using cat6. The interface often is very slow to navigate if wireless uses are connected.
Samsung TV and home cinema will not connect to it wireless. They did connect for about a month and no longer talk to it. I've tried re-entering the passkey etc.
We can have 4 mobile phones and a laptop connected, but sometimes it randomly refuses to let one of them on.
We have a few pcs connected via cat6. Most are hiding behind a gigabit switch.
We have a ps3 connected via cat6 as it is very slow via wireless.
We do have a reasonable amount of downloading/gaming. (1tb allowance per month)
We have a laptop connected via a 20m cat6 that sometimes won't work on the internet with no errors.


What would be a good router to set and forget for me? No specific budget, just something that will work reliably and give decent internet speeds.

I see above the netgear D6200, but I'd be happy to grab the D6300 to get the bonus of usb ports for an external hard drive for backups. I'm not limiting any decision to any brand.


DSL Line Status (http://192.168.1.1/infodsl.html)

Current DSL line status is displayed as the below.



Line Mode
ADSL2+
Line State
Show Time


Line Power State
L0
Line Up Time
00:00:02:23


Line Coding
Trellis On
Line Up Count
6





Statistics
Downstream
Upstream


Line Rate
23031 Kbps
1020 Kbps


Attainable Line Rate
24744 Kbps
1163 Kbps


Noise Margin
6.5 dB
9.3 dB


Line Attenuation
22.5 dB
12.3 dB


Output Power
18.0 dBm
12.3 dBm

[Sidewindr]

You'd be wise to utilise that swag of spare drives, otherwise if your array fails and manages to take the drives with it (think power spike or something) then you'll lose the lot.


That's what the UPS's and Line filters are for .. there is not on piece of electronic equipment in this house that is not connected to it's own or a shared UPS .. ;) I had problems in my old condo as the power in Thailand is quite shitty .. The missus and I awoke to a loud bang at 6am one Saturday morning and something was awry with the power, 2 UPS's lost their magic smoke (oddly the 2 that had no load on them the other 2 were fine) and things were not feeling right .. then a power socket converter which had a small red "on" light in it burst into flames prompting quick action to put out the fire in the power socket as well as rapidly disconnect all electrical devices from the points and isolate the condo's power at the breaker .. once I was happy that there was nothing plugged into the power outlets in the entire condo I switched the breaker back on and investigated... I found some outlets were measuring 120-145v and others were measuring 380-450v, I reckon someone dropped a phase on my circuit by accident ..

Anyway I tried to explain to the Landlord that he would have to pay to repair any damaged equipment but that was like pushing poo up a popsicle stick with a needle, she tried to blame it on the electricity authority. I had also shown a building maintenance guy the voltage measurements on my multimeter when it happened hoping to have some proof/backup for when the electrician for the condo complex arrived.. Had to wait for 2-3hours for the electrician so went back to bed and when we woke up 3 hours later I checked the outlets again and mysteriously everything was back to "normal" I was pissed off!! :D

Resulting damage ended up being,
- Every single plug-pack power transformer/charger in the house which was not plugged in behind a UPS or surge protector no longer worked..
- Microwave go boom..trashed
- 1 NEC 15" LCD Monitor ... no magic smoke left ..
- 2x 1500VA UPS's also ran out of magic smoke..
- The 52" Samsung Series 7 LCD TV just clicked when and nothing else when turned on ... ended up being a fried Inputs Board and was repairable ..
- Almost lost the Fridge as it was shaking like there was someone in it but I managed to pull the plug on it before the compressor or something else went kapow..

The TV was plugged into a UPS but what killed it was the cable box which was plugged into the TV was not behind the UPS so what happened is it blew the hell out of the Inputs Board in the TV ..

There were a few other things that fried that I can't think of right now but ended up being around $2k AUD equivalent in damage/replacements.. So not bad considering and the UPS's did their jobs!! :D

[Plenty]

I'm going to replace my Netcomm nb6plus4wn router, and chasing recommendations.

I'll try and list everything about this one
I can connect at 22.6mb on ADSL 2+, stats below (you will see it dropped whilst typing this message). I'm on a RIM.
The ADSL connection drops out randomly. Some days it will drop multiple times, other days it's ok. This is the main issue why I'm looking at replacing it.
If I plug a double adapter into the pone line and run a second phone drop outs become worse.
At random times I cannot even connect to the routers interface, even using cat6. The interface often is very slow to navigate if wireless uses are connected.
Samsung TV and home cinema will not connect to it wireless. They did connect for about a month and no longer talk to it. I've tried re-entering the passkey etc.
We can have 4 mobile phones and a laptop connected, but sometimes it randomly refuses to let one of them on.
We have a few pcs connected via cat6. Most are hiding behind a gigabit switch.
We have a ps3 connected via cat6 as it is very slow via wireless.
We do have a reasonable amount of downloading/gaming. (1tb allowance per month)
We have a laptop connected via a 20m cat6 that sometimes won't work on the internet with no errors.


What would be a good router to set and forget for me? No specific budget, just something that will work reliably and give decent internet speeds.

I see above the netgear D6200, but I'd be happy to grab the D6300 to get the bonus of usb ports for an external hard drive for backups. I'm not limiting any decision to any brand.


DSL Line Status (http://192.168.1.1/infodsl.html)

Current DSL line status is displayed as the below.



Line Mode
ADSL2+
Line State
Show Time


Line Power State
L0
Line Up Time
00:00:02:23


Line Coding
Trellis On
Line Up Count
6





Statistics
Downstream
Upstream


Line Rate
23031 Kbps
1020 Kbps


Attainable Line Rate
24744 Kbps
1163 Kbps


Noise Margin
6.5 dB
9.3 dB


Line Attenuation
22.5 dB
12.3 dB


Output Power
18.0 dBm
12.3 dBm



ASUS RT-AC68U great AC router you'll just need to use your ADSL modem in the WAN port.

[QldKev]

ASUS RT-AC68U great AC router you'll just need to use your ADSL modem in the WAN port.

I must not have been clear in the issue why I'm after a replacement.

"The ADSL connection drops out randomly. Some days it will drop multiple times, other days it's ok. This is the main issue why I'm looking at replacing it."

So the key to the replacement is the ADSL line dropping all the time. Secondary is the wireless connections.

From my googl'ing today I'm looking at
Billion BP7800NXL $149
Billion BP7800VDPX $205
Billion BP7800VDOX $230

[C4B]

Have you tried increasing the line filtering? Some isp's have a function to increase and decrease the noise filtering.. I know Telstra does.. higher the noise filtering the more stable the connection but at the sacrifice of speed and ping..

They all do.

We just had a client cut over to SNR15 because of line issues.

[bert02]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58260317/pc/20150106_141031.jpg
The HTPC/server/Nas/etc etc HP40nl upgraded 2Gb > 4Gb of genuine ECC ram as all other ram caused problems. except the actual genuine sticks that come with it .
runs 24/7, hosts all my media on it. Basically does everything. Its running win7 64 bit. i think 10TB storage. (no backups but i do have some external drives i periodically backup to)
stationed in the lounge room as main HTPC connected to a logitech 650 remote


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58260317/pc/20150106_140830.jpg
Adsl2 modem with Buffalo Router running DD-WRT and a 5 port Gigabit switch
Modem is parents old DG834v3 and Router is something i bought for another purpose and now just use it for its superior features, UPnP, VPN, static ip's, gotta love DD-WRT. only thing i cant seem to do is setup dual SSID for guests as it breaks everything when i set it up.
also my solar RS232 converter to ethernet

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58260317/pc/20150106_141109.jpg
RaspberryPI B+ running Openelec for bedroom accessing SQL library for XBMC (sub $100 including all cables etc)
using old 5.1 dvd surround sound unit for sound

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58260317/pc/20150106_140902.jpg
my old RaspberryPI B running Openelec for outside area accessing SQL library for XBMC (sub $100 including all cables etc)
using old cd player for sound
using old plasma tv since i had to upgrade as the plasma was affecting my internet connecting where it was in the bedroom

Basically running everything with as much old stuff as i had laying around which is why the PI works best as it has analog audio out and for sub $100 cant complain with the price either.



I simply use samba shares for TV/Movies etc .. and each TV and Stereo has a small form factor not too expensive (around $800) PC as a Home Theatre PC. I have an Acer Aspire X5900 connected to the living room TV and 7.1 HiFi via HDMI and optical and slightly cheaper Acer Aspire X3950 connected to the TV in the bedroom via HDMI. Both have their own Logitech K400R keyboard w/ integrated touch pad and dual boot Windows 7 and XBMC ... Check out XBMC if you want a catalogued media interface, you can run it as an application under windows like Windows Media Centre or as a linux boot dedicated appliance .. All my media is simply stored on samba shares under directories and XBMC does a wonderful job with both movies and TV shows..

FORGET TRANSCODING and DLNA TWONKY ETC .. My Sammy TV is a series 7 and has a built in media player with DLNA support and it is pathetic compared to the HTPC ;) ...

Next telly I buy will have a very HQ display and as few expense adding frills like network/internet/DLNA/media player built into it, a HTPC is a far better and more flexible option especially when it comes to codec support and compatibility.
i used to use an lg media station with a 1TB my book nas and DLNA but for some reason DLNA always looked crap quality and using samba shares it looked way better.

all my media is stored as samba shares and use mysql for xbmc to tie it all together so i can play in 1 room and resume in the other,all watched items show the same on each.

i use my android phone with yatzee for my xbmc remotes and anymote to control the tv and sound but also have a wireless keyboard with trackball but dont need to use it for the PI's
only downside to the pi is its not like windows where i can do alot of other stuff. but that can be done on the HPTC, our pc or our phones so not a big issue.

good luck finding "a very HQ display and as few expense adding frills like network/internet/DLNA/media player built into it"also smart, 3D
those are things that dont cost them much more for them but can charge a premium for. i had to buy a tv with that as it there was no other option to buy without other than the cheaper brands. HTPC > Smart tv any day of the week



I'm going to replace my Netcomm nb6plus4wn router, and chasing recommendations.

I'll try and list everything about this one
I can connect at 22.6mb on ADSL 2+, stats below (you will see it dropped whilst typing this message). I'm on a RIM.
The ADSL connection drops out randomly. Some days it will drop multiple times, other days it's ok. This is the main issue why I'm looking at replacing it.
If I plug a double adapter into the pone line and run a second phone drop outs become worse.
At random times I cannot even connect to the routers interface, even using cat6. The interface often is very slow to navigate if wireless uses are connected.
Samsung TV and home cinema will not connect to it wireless. They did connect for about a month and no longer talk to it. I've tried re-entering the passkey etc.
We can have 4 mobile phones and a laptop connected, but sometimes it randomly refuses to let one of them on.
We have a few pcs connected via cat6. Most are hiding behind a gigabit switch.
We have a ps3 connected via cat6 as it is very slow via wireless.
We do have a reasonable amount of downloading/gaming. (1tb allowance per month)
We have a laptop connected via a 20m cat6 that sometimes won't work on the internet with no errors.


What would be a good router to set and forget for me? No specific budget, just something that will work reliably and give decent internet speeds.

I see above the netgear D6200, but I'd be happy to grab the D6300 to get the bonus of usb ports for an external hard drive for backups. I'm not limiting any decision to any brand.


DSL Line Status (http://192.168.1.1/infodsl.html)

Current DSL line status is displayed as the below.



Line Mode
ADSL2+
Line State
Show Time


Line Power State
L0
Line Up Time
00:00:02:23


Line Coding
Trellis On
Line Up Count
6





Statistics
Downstream
Upstream


Line Rate
23031 Kbps
1020 Kbps


Attainable Line Rate
24744 Kbps
1163 Kbps


Noise Margin
6.5 dB
9.3 dB


Line Attenuation
22.5 dB
12.3 dB


Output Power
18.0 dBm
12.3 dBm



your SNR and Line Attenuation stats look way better than mine and i get a constant 1.1MB/s download im also on the 'Fastest' line filtering option - ie no line filtering with no dropouts.


If I plug a double adapter into the phone line and run a second phone drop outs become worse.

im thinking either you have a dodgy phone point or maybe water in a connection somewhere.
do you have a line filter going into the modem and phones?

how many phone points are in the house?
are you using the first one?
have you tried the others?