I have a simple network at home: I have my main rig and a media pc networked together using a Sagem router that came with my Sky broadband. Both my pcs and a router are connected with a cable. Router is wireless so I connect my laptop, my Blackberry, housemate's pc, his desktop and an Iphone wirelessly.

The problem is that I use my media pc as a fileserver and the connection between them is just too slow. When I copy files it doesn't get faster than 13MB/s. Often I need to unzip 1GB files stored on the media pc using my main rig and it takes aaaages.

How can I make my network faster? I am not gonna change my router as that is too much hassle and Sky probably won't let me. I was thinking that maybe getting a 1gbit switch between my rig and a media pc would help. And then connect switch to the router for internet connection.

Would that work? Or can you come up with even better solution?

Cheers

If you're the only one who uses the server, then gigabit cross over between the two would do the trick.

If not then yeah, as you say a gigabit switch into the Sagem.

Server needs to be connected to the internet as well and I am the only one using it.
So do I go:
main rig => switch <= server
and then switch connected to the router for internet access?

If so, will this Netgear GS605 5-port Gigabit Switch be ok?

Does the server have a wireless card??

If it does, then I'd connect the PC with a X-over and connect it to the router wirelessly so you can access it over the internet. It would be the cheapest solution.

If it doesn't have a wireless card then yeah, that switch or any other would do the trick. Just remember you'll need a cross over cable between the two switch's ports.

I'd go for the switch option.

gigabit switch would be the best bet

Thank you guys for the input, I decided to go with this:

Netgear ProSafe GS105 5-port Gigabit Switch specs: here
Belkin Cat5e Moulded UTP Crossover Cable

Can somebody confirm that I am buying correct stuff for what I need? I don't know much about networks so I want to make sure...

Cheers

Yeah that will do the trick.

And the good news is that you won't need the cross-over cable either.

Thanks Nick, I placed the order yesterday, it should be here on Friday.
I will let you know the result when I implement it on my network.

Ok guys, I got the switch installed.

I turned off my main rig, my server and the router, plugged all three into the switch turned them all on and it just worked straight away.

Before it took 2m 5s to extract (to my main rig) 1.09gb file saved on the server. Now it only takes 25s. It is also nice to listen to internet radio and not having interruptions in playback when copying files at the same time. Even internet browsing seems faster for some reason and I only have 3200kbit/s connection.

All I have to do is update ip addresses for port forwarding.

Thanks for your help

Excellent news.

Why do you need to change IP addresses though? That should all still work just as it did.

I don't know why, maybe because I turned the router off. Just to make sure I am clear: I am talking about internal ip addresses. They def. changed but I updated the forwarding rule by loging into the router. All works now.

EDIT: sorry I was very clear after all. IP addresses changed on their own when I added the switch. I didn't change them. I had to change the port forwarding rule. I hope it makes sense now.

Do you use DHCP? I can't think of any reason the addresses would have changed, unless you use DHCP and normally leave the machine(s) turned on.

I don't know what DHCP is tbh. My server is on 24/7 and runs Ubuntu. However when I want to watch movie I reboot it into Vista so I can use hardware acceleration on HD. Most of the time I put my main into sleep when I am not using it and reboot it couple of times every week.

Can I assign IPs manually to my computers so they won't ever change? That would be useful...

Yes there should be no worries as long as you don't reuse the same IP address and they are all on the same subnet (if you are using 192.168.x.x then that should be 255.255.255.0)

Turn of dhcp in all your routers as well that will be under LAN settings on the config pages.