[Mafamaticks]

First off I love XBMC. I have an okay setup at home. But I'm hindered by network bandwidth.

I have a house with 3 floors.

Setup:

• Server, Fios modem and Wireless N router with tomato are in the basement
  
• 3rd floor has 3 TVs.
  
• My room has a nettop box with XBMC
  
• Son's room has an Apple TV 2 with XBMC
  
• Daugher's room doesn't have anything yet (still deciding)
  

I can't really wire ethernet through my walls, powerline networking sucked when I tried it, so my only option was wireless. Obviously I run into a lot of buffering when streaming 720P. Although the Apple TV 2 does it fine (95% of the time) my nettop box doesn't.

At this point I'm considering using the server to download stuff, and just using sneakernet to copy movies/tv shows to the other devices (besides the ATV 2). As far as my daughter's room, I'm may just get a WD TV Live Hub and have her watch stuff locally.

Have y'all been in a similar situation?

[mr.sparkle]

With the Dlink AV 500 powerline series, I get 30MB/s over NFS through several floors and rooms over - was able to stream those Prometheus rips with the 70,000kb/sec spikes without stutter.

[Mafamaticks]

I wish I had the same experience. I got some Linksys 200 MB ones that are slower than using wireless. I get like 2/4 using it on a desktop computer. Using wireless I get like 10/15.

I'm scared to make another powerline purchase and have it not work on me again. I'll consider it though. What router are you using?

[artrafael]

@Mafamaticks
Is it possible for you to move your WiFi router from the basement to at least the first floor of your house to bring the transmitter closer to where your systems are located? If not, maybe you can try a WiFi range extender to improve signal strength on the upper floors.

@mr.sparkle
You're lucky with your house wiring, since this has a great impact on how well powerline network adapters perform. When I tried them a few years ago, I could move an adapter from an outlet on one side of a room to one on the other side and throughput would drop or increase dramatically. In another instance, I had a PC with a "dirty" power supply that injected noise into the wiring and prevented the powerline adapter from connecting to the network.

[mr.sparkle]

Yeah, I've been lucky. The locations are all on the same circuit, I presume. I also run ethernet cable along the walls as far as I can.

[Mafamaticks]

@Mafamaticks
Is it possible for you to move your WiFi router from the basement to at least the first floor of your house to bring the transmitter closer to where your systems are located? If not, maybe you can try a WiFi range extender to improve signal strength on the upper floors.

Unfortunately my router and modem are stuck there. This house was built in the 90's, but it only has 3 coax jacks throughout the entire house. One of which is in the basement. The net top box seems to get a good signal. On Win 7, it's 4 bars although the connection speed fluctuates from 20-60 Mbps. Do you think an extender will fix that?

[artrafael]

No guarantees, but I'm thinking if you have an extender on the 1st or 2nd floor, that would help relay and boost the Wifi signal up to the 3rd floor where you have your devices.

Although, with Fios connectivity, I'd do whatever I can to get an Ethernet cable up to the 3rd floor to take advantage of all that bandwidth... even if it means running a cable outside the house if I'm not able to snake it through the interior walls.

[Atomic Zombie]

What about a Directional antenna for the basement? point it upwards.

[dmaker]

If powerline networking isn't going to cut it (and it's not surprising that it doesn't), and wireless isn't either, you are fairly limited in your options with current gen home networking technology. One thing you might want to consider ( and this is what I did), is to find a spot upstairs ( I used the closet in my office), drill a hole to the outside and run professional plastic conduit to your basement. Depending on the size of the conduit you choose you can then stuff several CAT 5/6 cables in there. Unless you have a very large house you are not going to bump up against spec limits for attenuation or anything like that. You can go like 300 feet easily with copper Ethernet. From there you can wire up a wifi access point which will increase the signal strength to your upstairs. Finding a consumer level device that is strictly a wifi access point might be tricky, but you can certainly use any decent wireless router for this purpose. That's what I do. I have an ASA 5505 in my basement that connects to my cable ISP and for devices upstairs I have a Dlink 8 port Gigabit switch that uses one of those CAT6 cables I ran from the closet to the basement and has a Dlink Wifi router plugged into it. All you need to do is just not configure any of the WAN stuff on the router, and POOF! you have ( sort of ) a WiFi access point.

This way all of your basement devices get the max bandwidth they require and anything upstairs only has to reach the wifi AP that you use. I was lucky enough to have a tradesmen for a brother in law so the conduit part was covered by a couple of cold beers and copying Battlestar Galactica onto a usb drive for him But it's actually quite simple with the right tools, it's really just a matter of getting through the drywall and the brick to the outside and installing the conduit. Not too bad at all really. It sure beats running Ethernet to each room in the house.

[UnderCoverUZI]

@Mafamaticks
Is it possible for you to move your WiFi router from the basement to at least the first floor of your house to bring the transmitter closer to where your systems are located? If not, maybe you can try a WiFi range extender to improve signal strength on the upper floors.

Unfortunately my router and modem are stuck there. This house was built in the 90's, but it only has 3 coax jacks throughout the entire house. One of which is in the basement. The net top box seems to get a good signal. On Win 7, it's 4 bars although the connection speed fluctuates from 20-60 Mbps. Do you think an extender will fix that?

The 90's is no excuse! my house was build in 1941 and I just ran the entire thing with coaxial(basement, 1st and 2nd), Ethernet coming soon. My router is in the basement and I still have great signal upstairs also. I ran the coaxial out the basement foundation and up the side of the house into the attic. Then ran the cables down to the second floor. For the first floor I just went from the basement into the floor.

[Mafamaticks]

What about a Directional antenna for the basement? point it upwards.

That's what I'm doing now. That gets me a good signal, but not enough bandwidth unfortunately.

The 90's is no excuse! my house was build in 1941 and I just ran the entire thing with coaxial(basement, 1st and 2nd), Ethernet coming soon. My router is in the basement and I still have great signal upstairs also. I ran the coaxial out the basement foundation and up the side of the house into the attic. Then ran the cables down to the second floor. For the first floor I just went from the basement into the floor.

I brought up the age of the house to say I was shocked to see it only had 3 coax jacks throughout the house (pretty low) and not one single ethernet jack anywhere. I'm really not in a position to do any major projects since I'm renting.

Stuff...

I may look into this.


Thanks for the input y'all. I really appreciate it.

[fatal.]

If wifi is your only option I would definitely consider trying one of the new 802.11ac routers (along with ac adapters for your xbmc boxes)...stiff draft I believe but can't hurt to try.

[Mafamaticks]

If wifi is your only option I would definitely consider trying one of the new 802.11ac routers (along with ac adapters for your xbmc boxes)...stiff draft I believe but can't hurt to try.

Never heard of them. I'll do some research.