Advice needed for a home network setup (hardware & software) to handle many clients and potentially heavy traffic

Posted by posdef on Super User See other posts from Super User or by posdef
Published on 2011-01-10T23:46:40Z Indexed on 2011/01/10 23:55 UTC
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I have recently decided to re-structure the home network of our flatshare here. Here's a quick outline of the situation. I envision to have the following 4 devices connected to the router via cable:

  • Xbox 360
  • IP phone
  • Printer
  • QNAP server (Web, File and Multimedia)

We are three people living here, so on top of that there will be to 5-6 computers/mobile devices connecting as wireless clients. My goal is to be able to transfer files (when needed) between the computer and the Multimedia server, which I can reach via 360 and play on the TV. I also would like to keep a high level of security; right now I have the encryption on WPA2 and MAC filtering.

I don't believe the web server will get heavy traffic, though I would like to have it responsive. Likewise, I don't have a habit of downloading via torrent etc, but I greatly appreciate my network being responsive and fast, especially when I am browsing or streaming high quality media.

Now my questions are:

  1. is this setup feasible? smart? efficient?
  2. can this be improved somehow?
  3. my current router (D-Link DI624) and the previous one (DI-524) used to have spontaneous drops in network, which I find highly irritating. I don't believe in my router, especially now that it completely crashed when I was test-running the setup by transferring a large media file to server while xbox was playing music from the server, and two computers browsing the net. Do I need to get new hardware, if so, any recommendations for a reliable and fast router?

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