Hi all,
This is a very basic post and not something new but one that could help a lot of IT-challenged individuals like myself. The lesson learnt is about the limitations of wifi.
I had my wifi modem installed in a central but very inconvenient spot. So the wifi router went there as well and gave me reasonable coverage. The heart of my computer setup (microserver, laptop, head fi listening station, etc.) is in my study about 10m away. So I installed a Netgear range extender in the study and wired everything up. My thinking was that with everything hard wired there should be minimal wifi traffic. Boy was I wrong! Turns out every bit of data is sent to the router and back, slowing down network performance dramatically. Even tasks I considered to be local like indexing a large music collection on LMS or JRiver took days. Copying large chunks of data was painful to say the least. And then I started getting dropped signals and glitchy video playback.
I resisted going the wired route because I have a flat roof (litterally no roof cavity in places) and I dont like surface mounted cables. RottenJohnny, Wietsche and others convinced me try relocating the router to the study. I made a temporary plan with cables on the floor, and linked up the router to a gigabit switch I bought from Wolla last year. The performance gain was massive and immediate. Copy speeds increased five fold and other data-intensive operations showed a similar improvement.
Wietsche loaned me his cable making tools, and I bought 20m of CAT6 cable and two wall-mount boxes from HD Cabling for the princely sum of R 220. Installation took about 2.5 hours and three tubes of Bostik Clear to get the cable seated neatly in the corners. A smear of acrylic filler and a paint touch up will round off the installation just nicely. Like everything there is a bit of a learning curve but it is dead easy to do if you take your time and watch a couple of youtube vids to build confidence.
I still use wifi to get to three bedrooms down the hallway and to the lounge (music and even HD video playback is not a challenge for wifi) but other than that I am now a self-confessed draad trekker. This was by far the best R200 I have ever spent in the age of computer audio.
This is a very basic post and not something new but one that could help a lot of IT-challenged individuals like myself. The lesson learnt is about the limitations of wifi.
I had my wifi modem installed in a central but very inconvenient spot. So the wifi router went there as well and gave me reasonable coverage. The heart of my computer setup (microserver, laptop, head fi listening station, etc.) is in my study about 10m away. So I installed a Netgear range extender in the study and wired everything up. My thinking was that with everything hard wired there should be minimal wifi traffic. Boy was I wrong! Turns out every bit of data is sent to the router and back, slowing down network performance dramatically. Even tasks I considered to be local like indexing a large music collection on LMS or JRiver took days. Copying large chunks of data was painful to say the least. And then I started getting dropped signals and glitchy video playback.
I resisted going the wired route because I have a flat roof (litterally no roof cavity in places) and I dont like surface mounted cables. RottenJohnny, Wietsche and others convinced me try relocating the router to the study. I made a temporary plan with cables on the floor, and linked up the router to a gigabit switch I bought from Wolla last year. The performance gain was massive and immediate. Copy speeds increased five fold and other data-intensive operations showed a similar improvement.
Wietsche loaned me his cable making tools, and I bought 20m of CAT6 cable and two wall-mount boxes from HD Cabling for the princely sum of R 220. Installation took about 2.5 hours and three tubes of Bostik Clear to get the cable seated neatly in the corners. A smear of acrylic filler and a paint touch up will round off the installation just nicely. Like everything there is a bit of a learning curve but it is dead easy to do if you take your time and watch a couple of youtube vids to build confidence.
I still use wifi to get to three bedrooms down the hallway and to the lounge (music and even HD video playback is not a challenge for wifi) but other than that I am now a self-confessed draad trekker. This was by far the best R200 I have ever spent in the age of computer audio.
