Now that I am primarily working from home, I have set up an office in the basement complete with running Ethernet cable through the drop ceiling, adding a Smart TV with only an Ethernet connection for Pandora and Netflix streaming, and putting in a Verizon network extender to get around the horrific basement cell coverage. The number of data connections has continued to increase, so I finally sat down and drew out my home network to see what I've got.
At any given moment, there are 15 end devices and 5 switch/router devices active on my home network. And I'm not even one of those "connected home" types with Ethernet-enabled toasters. Considering that at least 3 of those devices are actually designed to stream video, not including the phones which also all have Netflix and YouTube apps, that's a lot of bandwidth pull.
I've considered adding a home management system with smart thermostat, lighting, security, etc., but never got around to it. I may actually have too many things already connected and demanding bandwidth to ensure that another overlay system would work well, perhaps until I spend some time upgrading the switching architecture. I think this puts me somewhere in the middle of the Luddite to Trendsetter spectrum.
The next time someone from a carrier asks "what would you do with 100Mbps to the home?", I'm going to break out this diagram. 100Mbps is going to be laughably slow to our kids.
2 comments:
Ummm... I do a small subset of that, but not with wired cables. Is there a reason you don't like 802.11?
802.11 is a wonderful technology. See all the little lightning bolts in the diagram? Those are all wifi. But 802.11 doesn't reach from the cable modem/router on the top floor of my house to my basement office. That's why I have the router to basement switch connection - it's CAT5 running down what used to be a in-house vacuum system. Once you start down the wired route, it makes sense to use it as much as possible in the local areas. The throughput is higher (at least for now) and less sensitive to interference.
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