I am trying to figure out how best to expand my tiny home office LAN network to enable full home networking for three new Bolder SB2's on order (all wireless). Since my townhouse is almost 20 years old, I have full home cable TV coax wiring, but no CAT 5 ethernet beyond my office. I was initially expecting to try WiFi for my SB2's from my media server in my baement (soon to be a new Mac Mini with external firewire HD's for storage). I have heard varying reports among SB users about the reliability of the wireless networks. Some have trouble-free performance across three floors (but with the WiFi router on toop floor), and others have mysterious drop-outs or conflicts with neighbors or other devices stepping on the band frequencies (phones, microwaves, etc). Living in a dense townhouse community, I anticipate all manner of WiFi conflicts. The surest bet, of course, is to hire a home installer to run some CAT5 around my home, with the unavoidable and substantial costs of drywall punching and repainting. As an alternative, I have been reading of far less costly networking techniques using existing home wiring. I know next to nothing about this networking technology and would like to see if this thread could help others get cleaner, more robust wired ethernet networking for PC audio and video, when running new CAT5e cable is not practical or just too expensive.
Most interesting to me is the idea of using existing coax cable TV wires and plugs for ethernet networking to enable IPTV (like Verizon FIOS) and data streaming (SB's). Coaxsys is one company which appears to be the leader in this technology and this year unveiled their "TVnet2 " for up to 200 mbs ethernet data speeds over coax. One worry I would have is how much bandwidth is available for ethernet audio streams (SBs) if you are simultaneously using the cable TV? I have asked an installer to contact me to answer this and other questions about Coaxsys TV net.
http://www.hdbeat.com/2005/12/19/iptv-without-speed-limits-from-coaxsys/At the same time, I see that that Belkin has a new Powerline Ethernet Adaptor plug unit to use the home's electrical wiring for ethernet (using the HomePlug standard). MacWorld in the current Sept. issue found this to be a very effective approach in streaming even large HD video files over a home network from a central Mac server to a Mac Mini connected to a HDTV, where WiFi was immediately choked. But I feel nervous about having the old, very noisy home wiring grid used for media streaming. Maybe the two-way ethernet packet approach, perhaps with some buffer in the receiver or player, would ensure bit-pefect data integrity, regardless of the lousy lines being used?
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=152644Does anyone have any experience or thoughts on these alternative home networking approaches? I understand the new Verizon FIOS and ATT IPTV services require a wired 100 base-T ethernet network, and the rollout of these heavy bandwidth TV services, in addition to VOIP phone, will surely accelerate the development of new, more cost-effective home networking techniques, where WiFi can't manage the huge data requirements. I wonder what compromsises these existing-wire approaches would present compared to all-new CAT5e wiring? Is the emerging longer-distance Wimax wireless, being pushed by Intel, another more promisng new technology that will solve our wired problems?
Rob
