Pierre’s Lab

In the past, I wasn’t very happy with D-Link. I had several problems with my previous wireless network. I tried Buffalo, D-Link and both were regularly failing, the worse being Buffalo. The LinkSys wireless router was the best.

After the fire, I upgraded my equipment with the latest LinkSys 54G but it didn’t work very well and it lacks 2 major features: GiGE ports and switching capabilities. So the darn box crashes each time we tried to download or print big files and I’m not talking about video streaming. I called customer service but all I heard was the computers’ fault.

I purchased the D-Link DIR-655 at BestBuy for $149. The D-Link is a full duplex GiGE and according the specification with a 10G switching capability. The web interface is also way better than the one I was used to have before and way better than the LinkSys. The only real annoying feature is that you have to reboot the box each time you make a change.

The router is installed since 2 weeks, no connection dropped even while watching video streaming, no slow connection nor wireless problems. Bottom line, for $149 you get a real piece of network supporting more than you can expect.

After testing it on my computer, I installed Windows Vista on 3 of 5 of our computers. I just love it, it seems running much faster than XP and I’m very pleased with the network capabilities. No problem with drivers, wireless mice, keyboard or other USB devices. Even the Bluetooth ones got installed and configured smoothly without any help.
I remember when I installed my first Windows XP. I had to run everywhere to find compatible drivers.

Windows Vista, so far so good!

When the house burnt down in April 2006, it was a catastrophe. Fortunately we were very well insured and the house has been rebuilt and we financially didn’t loose anything and I had the opportunity to create a real network. Real network for me means 54G wireless, Fiber vertical cabling and Cat6 horizontal cabling.
Some call me crazy but as all the walls were open, I installed 1” orange tubing network around the house.
I got a new office, that was a kid’s bedroom on the main floor and I used the closet as a technical room. I’d enough space to place a 7’ rack and I could bring tubing from the top and bottom of the closet behind the rack. Each room receives at least 2 conduits with a special sub-closet for the kitchen/earth room area where 5 tubes are running from. The basement, not finished for now but has already a sub-closet.

Crazy may be but now each room is equipped with fiber, GiGE, cable and receive enough 54G wireless to watch a movie.

My first Home network was based on a Microsoft Small Business Server, dual CPU, 2 GB Memory, dual NIC card and two 75 Gig Hard Drives. Very sweet machine, always running, no crashes, one of the most reliable appliances in the house.
Behind the server I had a 24 Ethernet ports 10/100Mb HP switch to distribute to a network printer, 3 PCs, 2 laptops and a wireless ‘extender’. In front of the Server I had a cable modem connected to a firewall with the 1st NAT layer and 4 Vonage VoIP interfaces.
The wiring was made of good plain Cat5 cables.
Everything worked well but the wireless network. The box I had didn’t offer IP pass-through as an option so it had its own NAT and it was impossible then to logon onto the server! I never resolved that problem entirely.
Microsoft Small Business Server is quite an expensive tool for a home ($1,500 for 10 seats) but it offers all the features to make life easier: exchange server, file sharing, printer sharing, fax sharing, access control (great for kids), powerful firewall, internal website, media server etc…
Bottom line, I was very pleased with my home network!