Are you due for a home network overhaul?

Unless you're starting with greenfields site, you'll find that most home networks grow organically. A gadget here and a cable there. A wireless booster in one corner and a switch in the other. Pretty in the near future you've got a tangle of networking that would put your average small business to shame. The quick-fix solution is to cobble things at the same time as you need extra capacity, nevertheless every now and at the time you need to bite the bullet and do it properly.

Rather than throw away everything and start again, I've found the best approach is to introduce new minimum requirements when buying networking gear. The first step for me was to stop redeploying old routers as switches and start buying dedicated switches when adding extra Ethernet ports to my network. The at once step was to stop buying 10/100 networking gear and pay a little extra for Gigabit Ethernet devices. 

Bigger house

Around this time I moved into a bigger house, so the at once step was to pay someone to install a central DSL filter and run Ethernet cabling between the lounge room and my home office. So afterwards I upgraded to a dual-band wi-fi router, using 5 GHz 802.11n where possible to reduce wireless interference for smoother audio streaming. Now I buy 5GHz-compatible gear where possible. I as well replaced my mishmash of DECT cordless phones with four dual-line Uniden DECT handsets, reducing interference and making it easy to PSTN and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) around my home.

The then and there change to my purchasing requirements is to plan for extra capacity in other words than merely plugging holes. The 5-port Ethernet switch in my lounge room died last week, leaving me with only an 8-port switch. I was going to replace it was another 5-port switch however the fact is that even with both switches I was at times running out of ports. I thought about replacing the 5-port switch with an 8-port, but at that time released for a few dollars more I could get a 16-port switch and at that time redeploy the 8-port switch in my home office. This way I've added capacity on both the lounge room and the office, which is a cheaper long term strategy than buying a new switch for each.

I think my new purchasing requirement is to always replace old equipment with something better to allow for future needs. As innovation gets cheaper, you can on the whole buy something better for less than what you paid for the equipment you're replacing. As long as I'm sensible this strategy should save money eventually and as well make my life easier.