Home network upgrade - guidance please

[alchresearch 214]

23 hours ago, zach said:

I won't use the home plug adaptors on my network. Good AC WiFi and direct cables work much better IMO.

 

Depends on the quality of the router and the design and layout of the building.

 

I've gone with powerline adapters in a couple of places because of the poor quality bundled VM router (a TP Link replacement improved that though), solid almost 1 foot thick brick walls, or a very long house where the router was at the far end of the building and the wifi signal too weak to reach the other end.  We don't all live in standard semis with the router conveniently placed in the centre of the house.

 

But even with my current router in a good location, my Android box is far more responsive and buffers less when wired over wireless.

[Shafeeq 0]

1 - Wireless is great for flexibility and mobility.  It is by design a half duplex technology and cannot send and receive data packets at the same time.  So it will always be slower than a wired connection for higher throughput.

 

2 - I have had very good experience with Ethernet over main adaptors.

 

 

[Cyclone 10]

I have poor experience of ethernet over mains, half the house simply can't connect.  Different ring main perhaps.

Slower than the EQUIVALENT rated wired connection.  Not slower per se.

I'm looking at the new AX devices and they should all be faster in practice than 1Gbps ethernet, if the signal is good.

 

Running a cable to each room would probably still give an overall better experience, but that's not a trivial task in an existing 1940's house.

[TheNugget 10]

Another option for backup is cloud storage. I use Backblaze, which is cheap -about a fiver a month for unlimited storage and is fit and forget - the software takes care of it. In the event of a local disaster, they will send you your data on a hard disk.

[Afilsdesigne 10]

"Another option for backup is cloud storage" - Posted by TheNugget. This is very true and you can get lots of cloud space relatively cheap these days. My issue with this though is security. Once data, any data has left your property and hit the Internet, you lose control over it. Data is stored in multiple locations and travels over fibre networks that we already know are routinely intercepted by GCHQ and the rest (thanks Mr S). Now you may have 'nothing to hide' but do you mean this literally? Once AI gets working on your data, any concept of privacy is long gone. You may encrypt your data, but given the tools available to government hackers, or even advertising companies, will you risk this? Far far better to have a NAS to store all your stuff locally. The only real issues with this are fire and keeping the data offline to avoid virus (Bitlocker) type data attacks. Put the NAS in an outbuilding (warm and dry) and you should be fine.

[Happ 25]

46 minutes ago, Afilsdesigne said:

Put the NAS in an outbuilding (warm and dry) and you should be fine.

Until it gets stolen or corrupted...

[TheNugget 10]

30 minutes ago, Happ said:

Until it gets stolen or corrupted...

My issue is that I don’t have a suitable outbuilding.

I back up to a device stored in the house AND cloud storage. So if my house burns down I have a copy elsewhere.

most of the stuff I store is not confidential, music, movies, photos, so security is not a big concern. I understand there are security risks but you have to weigh the balance of probabilities. I judge that if the data is exposed the impact won’t be that high and the probability of my house burning down whilst low, makes keeping an external copy worth it.

[Cyclone 10]

On 12/01/2019 at 09:43, Afilsdesigne said:

"Another option for backup is cloud storage" - Posted by TheNugget. This is very true and you can get lots of cloud space relatively cheap these days. My issue with this though is security. Once data, any data has left your property and hit the Internet, you lose control over it. Data is stored in multiple locations and travels over fibre networks that we already know are routinely intercepted by GCHQ and the rest (thanks Mr S). Now you may have 'nothing to hide' but do you mean this literally? Once AI gets working on your data, any concept of privacy is long gone. You may encrypt your data, but given the tools available to government hackers, or even advertising companies, will you risk this? Far far better to have a NAS to store all your stuff locally. The only real issues with this are fire and keeping the data offline to avoid virus (Bitlocker) type data attacks. Put the NAS in an outbuilding (warm and dry) and you should be fine.

Encryption isn't a black art, there are no magic tools that let the NSA decrypt your data.  See the big court cases over encrypted iphones recently.

[TheNugget 10]

18 hours ago, Cyclone said:

Encryption isn't a black art, there are no magic tools that let the NSA decrypt your data.  See the big court cases over encrypted iphones recently.

Quite.

 

and what seems more likely. Your house burning down or some state or non state actor hacking your backup service, decrypting your data and that causing you an issue?

[Cyclone 10]

I can imagine the chaos they'd cause with my holiday photos!  And the small selection of letters and forms that I store.  Or perhaps they'd use my mp3 collection to blackmail me into turning over all the state secrets I know...