What do I need?

[gramps]

Ive been with TalkTalk for several years now with free broadband and I've had no complaints but I've decided to go with Virgin's 50MB cable broadband to provide me with better capacity, it's being installed on Friday.

Now my setup has been modem/router in the office attached to an additional 4-port switch unit and between them running a DVR, couple of NAS units and a couple of desktop machines - the laptop/iPad/iPhone in the house use a wireless connection to the office.

The Virgin modem/router will be in the house so I am planning to connect through to the office setup by using mains adapters, ('powerline'), and would obviously like the highest transfer rates that I can achieve, (I considered wireless but I think it would be less efficient/reliable).
So what would be the best equipment to get ... some of the 'powerline' adapters show 100mps, others 200mps and 500mps, then there are Gigabit adapters ... in theory the higher the better but I may not achieve what it says on the box and I don't know if Gigabite would be more likely to achieve advertised speeds than the others ... which will be my best option?
Also does my selection of switcher make any difference to transfer speed?
If so what is my best option?

TIA for your knowledgeable advice

 

[neil_g]

like you i prefer to run cabled where possible. i run a netgear 1gbps switch as my main network and connect direct where cable runs allow.

i run 200mpbs devolo adapters to run off to my HTPC and they cope with streaming high bitrate 1080 content from my NAS.

remember all devices will have to support that speed or greater. there would be no point getting a 500mbps powerline adapter and plugging it into a 100mbps switch etc.

 

[gramps]

Thanks Neil, so if I get 500mbps powerline adapters, would a 10/100/1000 switch be okay or do I need to be finding a 500 switch (if such exists)?

 

[arad85]

Gigabit switches will autonegotiate. There is no such thing as a 500Mbps switch but I would expect the 500Mbit/s powerline adaptors to have a Gbit ethernet connection so gigabit switch would be best....

BTW, you won't reach peak speeds though on the network with normal PCs. I have Gigabit everywhere here - all wired. I've just upgraded my home server to run a specialised s/w RAID system and for the first time, I've been able to get close to gigabit throughput (I had two simultaneous copies going over the weekend each running at ~50Mbytes/sec copy to the disk array across the network which is around 800Mbits/sec continuous). Previously, PC to PC I was maxing out at ~50Mbytes/sec total no matter what I did.

 

[gramps]

Thanks Andy, also into the mix is the type of modem/router that Virgin will supply ... I'm hoping that the newest will be Gigabit or it will all be a bit pointless!
I understand that I am unlikely to get max throughput but I just want to stack the odds in my favour by not creating a bottleneck somewhere

 

[gramps]

Update, the 50MB Virgin Broadband is now installed and I'm quite impressed, although initially I was concerned as the wireless connection was only giving around 25-30MB I have just managed to connect the desktops using a Netgear switch and 2 x Netgear Powerline units (across the mains wiring) and 1st test with speedtest.net showed just over 50MB ... well pleased ... so far!