Advice needed for a home network setup (hardware & software) to handle many clients and potentially heavy traffic
- by posdef
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:
is this setup feasible? smart? efficient?
can this be improved somehow?
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?
