Need help with Home Network - AV, File, Printer share et all

anshulkwatra

Commendable
Jan 9, 2017
3
0
1,510
Dear Experts,

My network has grown organically and have several components now. A map enclosed

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6fRc6SOmJt7LXlNTEQ5RExiWWs/view?usp=sharing

Need guidance from the experts with the following observations:

1. I have reached the limit on storage my hard disks can offer on Iomega Iconnect - how do I expand - NAS is an option (maybe something like Synology 216play) as mostly a) consumer videos on the TV and b) in the future have a private cloud storage for files - move off the multiple file sharing platforms

2. While watching videos, they do tend to buffer, how to I improve the same?

3. I have several calls with screen share on Zoom.info; how I ensure I get the best performance for the calls while the rest of the family can also continue using the network for their pleasure?

Experts I am looking at guidance; and I have not been able to share enough information on aspects which will help guide me, please do let me know and I can share. Thanks.

Thanks as always for the great help
Anshul
 
Solution
No traffic goes to the router unless it is going to the internet. Devices inside your house go directly between the ports on the switch and does not even need the router or internet to be actually functional. Pretty much once the router gives your PC a IP address it is no longer needed to talk to other devices on the lan.

Now in some networks that have the wireless on the main router the traffic between wireless and the switch would pass through the router. In your case you have AP connected to your switch so even that traffic will not go to the router. Still even in the router very technically the traffic does not go through the router part of the device. It will pass between the radio chips and lan switches it does not go...
Not sure what you are asking since you are talking multiple different things.

So if we limit your issues to only devices inside your house there are a couple things that can affect your performance. Anything connected via wireless will get inconsistent response times. There really is no way to fix this. There is only so much wireless bandwidth available and it does not share between devices very well. You can if you connect to multiple AP/router to a point spread the issue out. Unfortunately you do not have full control of the radio bandwidth. Most problems are coming from outside your house from neighbors using wireless. Pretty much you just have to accept random issues with wireless as the price you pay for mobility.

Most other issues in your network will be the end devices. There is a huge difference in the performance of NAS type of devices. A lot of this will depend on the performance of the disk systems in the nas. A single large low RPM driver will perform massively different than a array of SSD devices.

The network in this case will (ie your switch) will have almost no impact. That switch (like most) can run all 8 ports at 1gbit up and 1gbit down all at the same time. The switch will never bottleneck your network.

 

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
Since you have a "wrinkle" in your WAN connectivity with dual WAN and a load balancing router, you may need to manually balance services. assign VOIP to the 2Mbit and streaming video always to the 16Mbit for instance. Unless you have already done things like that, there is nothing that prevents a streaming video connection from using the 2Mbit WAN.
 

anshulkwatra

Commendable
Jan 9, 2017
3
0
1,510


Thanks @bill001g

I think, one of the chinks in the network is that the Load Balancer which runs the DHCP (routers as AP), is not gigabit capable. The ports are 100mbps.

Also thanks for the inputs, I think, I need to rethink and prioritize what I want from the network and raise the appropriate questions.

Thanks
 

anshulkwatra

Commendable
Jan 9, 2017
3
0
1,510


Thanks @kanewolf

That is a starting point, I have not done this segregation as on date. Normally for calls, I just do a policy routing on the IP address. I shall test the protocol based assignment and report back if I see any improvements. Thanks once again.
 
No traffic goes to the router unless it is going to the internet. Devices inside your house go directly between the ports on the switch and does not even need the router or internet to be actually functional. Pretty much once the router gives your PC a IP address it is no longer needed to talk to other devices on the lan.

Now in some networks that have the wireless on the main router the traffic between wireless and the switch would pass through the router. In your case you have AP connected to your switch so even that traffic will not go to the router. Still even in the router very technically the traffic does not go through the router part of the device. It will pass between the radio chips and lan switches it does not go thought the router cpu.
 
Solution