networking 101?

[daywane]

I have had a long time interest in a net work in my house.
I have not a clue.
Family of 3
we would like console EMU's, Music, movies pipe in all rooms.
no internet. file transfer would be a PLUS.
I would not mind if daughters bed room could print to Main PC in main room.
I know it sound strange but movies and music to bath room is a must.

any tips on a good web sight to read up on how to set this up?
a google search had me over whelmed. Also I think it was more for internet share. I do not wish to share internet at this point.

[stace]

Hi,

There are several options but it depends on whether you are purely after movie/music streams or weather you are looking for various pc's connected around the house.

A simple solution for Movies/Music/Photo's would be to get a nas box, a switch and something liek this for each room...

http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/index.php?pluginoption=catalog

There are cheaper options than the popcorn hour but it is very simple to use, easy to configure and provides a good quality solution.

You can do similar by having pc's around the house connected to TV's etc but it can be fiddly to watch anything (even with 3rd party Media Centre software) plus you have to wait for boot times etc.

If you can give me more detail, I can offer you more advise.  In the meantime have a look around here, ou will pick up alot of info in several areas of automation and streaming http://www.avforums.com/forums/index.php

Hope this helps as a starter for 10.

Stace 

[protokatie]

What you say you want sounds a lot like what I set up where I live (albeit I rent a room, and the whole thing is jury rigged)

From what I can tell, most of what you need is to simply set up a file share. In this case you would need a PC at each location, and for movies, you would need them on an HD (either shared or local). If you want TV stuff over this, then it becomes much more complicated. BTW, why no internet? If you have the ethernet strung and the computers, might as well use it for internet as well.

The whole home fileserver system I have set up cost almost nothing. Two recycled computers ($0) (one for the file server and one for the livingroom entertainment center), 2 1 TB external HDs (hooked to the file server for content) ($120 each), some ethernet (say 40 bucks). A remote for the livingroom PC (40 bucks). Plus already had a router. This allows all 6 computers in the house to access all content on the fileserver.

Maybe it would be helpful if you expressed what you really want out of the system vs cost in more detail. Otherwise it can be hard to help.

EDIT: It may have seemed like I was parroting the above poster, but there are some major differences in basic setup. Well.. Not really, but the devil is in the details. EG NAS = Network Attached Storage  Fileserver = dedicated computer setup on the network to allow other computers to access its storage. The basic concept is that NAS = Fileserver, but even more basic is that NAS does not equal fileserver... Understand?

EDIT2: This might be something useful you can play with until you get better answers: If you have a router and atleast 2 computers, set them up under one network neighborhood and make one of the drives on one of the computers sharable (Right click on the C: drive and go to share. From there click on the option to allow it to be shared). Play around with this stuff for a bit to get used to the idea of shared drives/folders and how they work. EDIT3: To see the shared drive from the other computer, you will have to (at least at first) go to: (Vista, start menu, network) (XP, right click on the task bar and go to properties, in advanced there is an option to add "network neighborhood" to the start menu. After doing that, click start and go to network neighborhood. From there, click on all network(or microsoft network) then click on your workgroup (default name is workgroup), then click on the computer you want to access the drive from.) Phew... From here you can make a local shortcut on the desktop to the shared drive. You can also mount a network drive in the "my computer" window. (Guess it isnt as easy as I thought, atleast not to communicate the steps....)


Sorry: EDIT4: Linux: If you have a linux box on the network and want to have it see your PC's shared drives/printers you can:
1. open a root terminal and type /etc/init.d/samba start
2. Find the Samba Server program for your version of linux and click on it
beyond that, it gets a bit more complicated...

[Ed_McCarron]

Modded XBOXes and XBMC work for me.  Run FreeNAS on an old PC to serve up your media.

[orion]

+1 for FreeNAS. It can be a real PITA though to set up and get going. It had fits just installing for me using some old PC's with AMD Duron processors. The main thing I liked about it though is that it has a lot of raid configurations and JBOD. I like JBOD for this because it lets you take a mix mash of old hardrives and it treats them as just one large drive. (not a safe back up solution for you data though like raid). A simpler solution would be to buy a router that you can just plug an external drive straight into, for an instant NAS like these http://www.cnet.com/topic-reviews/nas/router.html  I prefer linksys wireless routers because they work well and seem to be easier to configure than other brands. If you have to use wireless and want to stream video, I would recomend 802.11n, especially if you have HD content.

[protokatie]

Only thing about FreeNAS that I would say is a poo-poo is that it has very limited NTFS support, so you have to go with FAT32 or Ext2 or 3. Anyone used to dealing with linux is comfortable dealing with this issue. Basically, for FAT32 the only prob is the max file size (4gigs) and for Ext I do not know if windows supports it or not (It doesnt have to to access the data over the network, buts its always nice to have HD's swappable to other computers, incase something goes horribly wrong with the NAS box)

[boykster]

I would recommend anyone using a linux box as a NAS solution to use ext3.  Windows machines don't care what the native filesystem is when they connect to a fileshare over the network using an SMB share.  I personally use xfs, but ext3 is pretty standard on all linux distros these days (I bet its the default for freenas)

[Ed_McCarron]

FreeNAS defaults to UFS now.  There are tools to read UFS from windows.

[protokatie]

FreeNAS defaults to UFS now.  There are tools to read UFS from windows.

Was about to say that; if one goes the linux route, make sure to have a copy of Knoppix 5.1.1 lying around in case you need a win-box to read the drives directly.
Didn't know there were tools freely available to read Unix Fast file system for windows, but now I know.

The killer point for FreeNAS when it comes to a SAMBA network will be when it can properly handle uncompressed NTFS drives tho. Agree?

[ChadTower]

I just use external USB drives on the main server PC as my NAS and it works better than you'd think. 

[Haterot]

Running 8TB raid5 FREENAS of a an old PC. When the house was at the stud level i ran cat5 to every room.  i can stream most of my anime and movies to the xbo360 on my plasma. Would love to find a DVR that works with my dish and can pull data form the NAS.