14 Laptops 6 Desktops One home :S

[thorsonb]

I just moved into a self maintained student house with 12 housemates.


We have ONE internet connections at 25mbps (but we would like to upgrate to 60mbps fiber)

But the recent 11 tenants (excluding me) have been complaining that when they excessively use the internet.. it goes down!, they also stated that the Switches/routers are a bit over worked and might need some re-configuration or something.


Here's the deal.

In total its 12 rooms, 14 laptops , 6 deskptops... we would like to just provide each room with a WIRED LAN/Cat5 internet connection! and if they want Wifi, they get their own Wifi router.


Question is how should this be wired?

things to take into note:

• One internet line in
• needs to be split into 12 separate wires
• each person uses ALOT of internet each day (i'd say aproxx. 15 GB a week! per person)
• Do we need routers or just switches to prevent the internet connecting from dropping when everyone is active

Or perhaps u have a better solution?

 

[Hefemeister]

You need one router and at least one switch. You could get a wireless router to give wireless as it is close to the same price as a wired router but it may not cover the entire house. If this is the case you would need wireless AP's to extend the wireless.

Ideally you would have the router and switch in a central location and run a wire to each room. If this is not possible you can cascade additional switches strategically located around the house to limit wire runs.

Again you only want one router for the house. Other routers can be used as switches or AP's but you will want to turn off dhcp on any of these to eliminate conflicts.

Also with your situation I would consider getting a router with QoS so you can limit bandwidth to each computer to ensure even bandwidth for all members of the household.

 

[thorsonb]

You need one router and at least one switch. You could get a wireless router to give wirele........................................ .................... ............... ............ QoS so you can limit bandwidth to each computer to ensure even bandwidth for all members of the household.

Whats an AP? Wireless Access Point? At the moment we have a Wireless N router and everyone in the house gets signal strong enough to use the web without any problems

 

[kmote]

Whats an AP? Wireless Access Point? At the moment we have a Wireless N router and everyone in the house gets signal strong enough to use the web without any problems

... but it may not cover the entire house. If this is the case you would need wireless AP's

If the single wireless router is enough then you don't need to worry about it. Given that you will probably need to replace this router in the equipment upgrade anyway you will be effectively using this current router as an AP anyway.

 

[thorsonb]

Ok well I came up with this as a plan/idea

Since the house is two floors

we'll put one wifi router on each floor, and limit its connectivity (have it hidden) and only allow the people who live downstair access to the downstair wifi-router vi MAC address (also smart phones/iPhones)
Please let me know what you guys think...

It looked better on paper than in this image Sorry

 

[Hefemeister]

Looks fine. Just make sure to turn dhcp off on the wireless routers and you are good to go.

 

[kmote]

A picture is worth a thousand words. That looks good, I assume you already have one of those wireless routers but if it's cheaper you could use a wireless AP instead of another wireless router.