4 Bay NAS; Low Power; Reliable

[imel96]

Even if it's a low-quality cable, 100Mbps reliable is still nothing to dismiss anyway. I wouldn't call them out of date. If cat5 has lasted 20-25 years and is still decent, I bet a homeowner would get the same milage out of laying cat6 or cat6a today.

I agree, phone line is also proof of that. My point is many people don't have landline anymore but everyone has mobile.

The key part is "wherever practical". If you can run cabling throughout a house with reasonable convenience, do it. Most of us can't, but can at least plan the central "hub" of devices so that that as many devices as possible are co-located with the main router and can be wired to it.

I really like the "wherever practical", pragmatic thinking. I guess it makes sense to lay some infrastructure for
router/switch/base stations while still leaving everything else on wireless.

 

[Attonine]

I'm contemplating the DS415Play given it has hardware transcoding. How would I play stuff on my TV? I have an AT3.

If you are already using an ATV, and have video files that play on ATV, you do not need transcoding. This is why I recommended the j version above.

Unfortunately, to use ATV, the easiest way is to have a machine with iTunes running. It is possible to use ATV without iTunes though too (and access all your music and movies etc via the NAS on your iPhone, iPad etc. Synology have an iTunes server app that needs to be running, plus you need to use DS Audio on your iPhone, iPad etc. A quick google will get you all the info you need.

I have 2 x Synology NAS, iMac, MBP, 3 x iPhone, 2 x iPad, 2 x ATV, TM, AE, Cyrus Stream XP2 QX music streamer on my home network, more when family visit. The network is 100% wireless. I experience no problems what so ever when streaming media around the home, even when several streams are running at the same time, including HD movies and 24bit audio. However, if I had the option, I would hard wire what I could. It's just a more stable connection and takes a lot of the strain away from wifi. I wouldn't worry about the cables becoming outdated too much, if the conduits are in walls and cavities, it will be an easy job to upgrade cabling. If the conduits are not installed, then it's just an all round pain!

 

[imel96]

I wouldn't worry about the cables becoming outdated too much, if the conduits are in walls and cavities, it will be an easy job to upgrade cabling. If the conduits are not installed, then it's just an all round pain!

Why didn't I check for conduit
I quickly check photos of construction after reading this and cables are just laid/taped onto the frame.

If I had thought about this carefully I'd even put spare cable in there. I hate electrician doing networking stuff, they don't have any planning.

 

[AFEPPL]

But with laying cable, I can only think it'll only be outdated while radio wave will keep going faster.
I'm still using 802.11g/n I think and don't think it slows me down. Going to ac will improve it further.
I will have fttp, but the speed is not so great, only 30/1 mbps, I could use 100mbps ethernet with that.

WiFi is not able to do the volumes and the development hasn't really made big jumps forward. Cable, 10GBe is common now, 40GBe is already out and 100GBe is on the way.

Contrast with at best ac is 1300Mbps you can see the huge gap in capabilities.

 

[imel96]

WiFi is not able to do the volumes and the development hasn't really made big jumps forward. Cable, 10GBe is common now, 40GBe is already out and 100GBe is on the way.

Contrast with at best ac is 1300Mbps you can see the huge gap in capabilities.

Like I said, I agree cable will always be faster. But it doesn't mean anything because 100x faster is not the same as 100x more usable, at least not in home setup. Even my office doesn't need 10GbE.

For home I only think about video. Looking at video encoding, from h.262 (mpeg2) to h.265 (iphone6), bandwidth
requirements always go down (for same resolution). Mobile broadband had jumped from 2g to 4g around that time. From wikipedia, 4k bluray only needs 50Mbps minimum.

You'd also need a usb ethernet dongle for your retina macbook J

 

[monokakata]

I was lucky enough (in two houses) to have enough exposed so that laying cable wasn't difficult for me. And I was also lucky enough to have a reasonable "wiring closet," which is a huge help. Every cable on each floor arrives at the same place.

The one I'm in now has CAT6 everywhere - at least one drop in each room, and some have two. Both floors. Gigabit router and switches.

I have wireless ac available, and I'll use it for small file transfers, but I find it really convenient to (yes) grab the ethernet dongle for my MBP and make a transfer in a minute or two that would take many minutes via wireless.

So I agree with Lord Hamsa -- if you can sneak some CAT6, you should do so.

 

[macaron95]

i am bit lost with the Synology product range

so many differences in terms of Processors, different frequencies and dual/quad cores

hesitating between the powerful DS514+ and a new one just announced DS416

 

[Crazy Badger]

I've had a number of home NAS devices and knowing what I do now, wouldn't buy another, and would instead invest in a small home server (e.g. HP Microserver or similar) and use something like FreeNAS.

A slightly steeper learning curve than a Synology, ReadyNAS, Qnap, etc. device, but so much more powerful and versatile. Added advantage is most of what you learn about FreeBSD can be applied to OSX through Terminal

 

[AFEPPL]

Or not, given the mess that's both freenas and bsd...

 

[Crazy Badger]

I've been running a FreeNAS box for almost 2 years and it's been rock solid. The only problems I've had are being too close to the cutting edge with updates, but if you stay a few months behind everything runs fine.