Set up for a student house

Kasc

Kasc

Kasc

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Moving into a house next year. There are 9 of us, 8 on laptops 1 on a desktop (a few have xbox 360s).

What's the best set up for us router wise? We plan on getting 50Mb Virgin Media and get 100Mb when it becomes available.

I have imagine for so many wireless connections a pretty good router is required. Don't really want to spend more than £100, any thoughts?
 
When I shared a house with 5 others I built an intel atom itx based router and ran dd-wrt on it. We had a 24 meg dsl line and I was able to distribute it fairly using QoS when it got bogged down.

We had about 15-25 devices on the network. Coped fine.

Everyone thought it was a great success when we moved out. Only cost us £80.

Specs:
gigabyte itx atom 330 board
gigabit pci card
itx case with 150w psu
flash drive with dd-wrt installed

If you opt for a solution without QoS be prepared for some fights as the online gamers rage at the torrenters.
 
also remember if most of your network is wireless, then u'll also be sharing the wireless bandwidth as well

if all your using it for would be the internet connection, then it should be ok
but if ur transfering files between computers, that could really kill your connection.

id suggest getting a few wireless routers/ap and share the wireless load between them.

when i was at uni, we actually had 3 connections to the house and split the rooms up between the connections

but this was back in 2002, so the the connections wern't as fast
and we had 12 rooms, most having at least 3-4 devices in each
 
If you can afford it I'd go for both Cable and ADSL (Infinity if available) when sharing with that many users. Might be a case of, general cable connection for all users i.e. non-geeks who will be happy with anything that gets them online, then an extra adsl connection for 'power users' who are happy to pay that bit extra, gamers etc.

As mentioned QoS is a must if anyone is a gamer.

And to reiterate the above sharing wireless bandwidth between all that could be interesting, don't forget on top of the 8 laptops and assorted xboxes some people may have smartphones etc.

Finally I'm guessing with that many people you will be spread over multiple floors, something to bear in mind when it comes to connectivty (wireless signal / running cables). Make sure when setting up the router you check connectivity from every room otherwise you could end up with a situation where one user can't get a signal.
 
Are there any step by step guides as to the QoS system? I have no idea what that is, I'm fairly competent with computers though so if the set up isn't TOO bad I may give it go... bear in mind we have, at MAXIMUM £100 to spend (this will be hard as it is, I'm pretty much the only one with any kind of in-depth computer knowledge).

It will be hard enough convincing the others not going for a traditional router and off you go solution and letting me create some crazy concoction. I am definitely a gamer so QoS does sound like a must :0.

As I see it it's basically a small computer with a wireless adapter, which has that DD-WRT installed to handle the routing of information? I guess this is what a router is anyone, but this being custom?

Would this be able to cope with:

My wired PC (Gaming + Torrenting)
8 laptops (probably not all at once but perhaps occasionally)
A few torrenters
Xboxes
Smartphones

I literally just thought this would be a "buy this router" jobby :D guess not..:rolleyes:
 
You can't persuade them that a one off charge of £20 each is reasonable? Most students I know spend well over that on beer, occasionally in a day.

You want good quality of service. Or the fighting will be unreasonable. Linux does it well, but it would take some effort if you're unfamiliar with it. Running something like dd-wrt or tomato on fairly powerful hardware (an atom is probably overkill) is an easier approach.

You could just use the stock router, give it a couple of weeks while people fall out, then buy a good one. I don't think it's worth the squabbling, but if one of the nine of you runs bittorrent while someone else fails to watch iplayer, it will make a strong argument for buying a good router.

I'd suggest modem -> linux box -> switch, running dhcp on the linux box.
 
Cause its great for qos and other house internet type stuff with loads of features like dual wan if you get ADSL and cable.

Otherwise ignore me :)
 
deano said:
Cause its great for qos and other house internet type stuff with loads of features like dual wan if you get ADSL and cable.

Otherwise ignore me :)
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What he said.

Or search 'mikrotik'.

I would prefer pfsense, but I don't want to spend around £140 on low power hardware (e.g. alix) to run it, and I don't want to run it on an old pc with noise and power/space considerations....
 
pfsense is what i run here

althou worth looking at the latest 2.0 RC, which has a much improved QoS

doesn't really need much unix knowledge to install and set it up, and everything can be configured from its web page

mine just runs on a low powered via epia system
 
We have a house of 5, use the 20mbit Virgin line and apart from when Virgin mess up which is quite often, it works fine for gaming. We usually get pings around 50-70, although sometimes it does shoot up randomly, not sure if thats someone on the line torrenting, or just Virgin.

I think, at least for a house our size, setting up a Linux box and QoS is serious overkill. If someone torrents, we simply don't game for that period, or ask them to pause it.
 
Klo said:
I think, at least for a house our size, setting up a Linux box and QoS is serious overkill. If someone torrents, we simply don't game for that period, or ask them to pause it.
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Most routers you buy are just tiny linx boxes :) The advantage being size and power use. Provided you use one with plenty ram (rt-n16 would be the minimum imo) and tomato (dd-wrt is nice, but it's qos is lacking) it'll be fine.

Other options are build your own micro pc and load something like pfsense or a custom linux box. Those come with meaty cpus and a few gigs or ram for roughly the same price, but you have to be able to code linux to work them as they come is a raw state.

That said, asus have got a rog branded router one that way. 680mhz cpu, 1 gig of ram*, triple channel/dual radio 450mbs, large antennas & and black/red paintjob. RT-N66U.
 
Also if you are having the same issues that we had, you can put a repeater on each floor (our house was four floors of doom!)... Most routers are capable of being routers, Belkin have always been great to me, if your not to bothered by speed you can get a 54g wireless router from tesco for 20 and these can be used as repeaters!
 
The only thing with a fair bit of ram is currently the rt-n16 (~£80) with 128MB but it's single radio i.e. only 150MB. The pros are it's meaty enough to handle a daft number of connections and excellent qos if you use a tomato* build with mac limiting too. Also has detachable antennas, but a repeater would be better than swapping those. Second would be an E3000, which has 2 radios and the same cpu but only has 64MB of ram. Advantage of both is you need very little knowledge to work them, they have a tiny footprint and are portable (useful for students :)).

*DD-wrt is good, but it's slow gui and poor qos sort of rule it out.
 
Azuse05 said:
The only thing with a fair bit of ram is currently the rt-n16 (~£80) with 128MB but it's single radio i.e. only 150MB. The pros are it's meaty enough to handle a daft number of connections and excellent qos if you use a tomato* build with mac limiting too. Also has detachable antennas, but a repeater would be better than swapping those. Second would be an E3000, which has 2 radios and the same cpu but only has 64MB of ram. Advantage of both is you need very little knowledge to work them, they have a tiny footprint and are portable (useful for students :)).

*DD-wrt is good, but it's slow gui and poor qos sort of rule it out.
Click to expand...

What?! It's possibly the fastest router gui I've ever used. Especially when saving and applying settings!
 
Azuse05 said:
*DD-wrt is good, but it's slow gui and poor qos sort of rule it out.
Click to expand...

wait what?

Slow GUI?

Poor qos?

The gui and the qos are some of the best things about dd-wrt!

And we're not running an enterprise router with 3000 users here. 64mb is enough for a lively household and some policies.
 
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