High tech Xmas eve

After the half day at work Sam and I rushed home to get all techie back in the house. Yesterday I took delivery of some new networking gear to replace our current set up. It was a completely painless task setting everything up.

First up we have the DrayTek Vigor 2860n router which is replacing our BT Home Hub 5 (and 2 and 3 that we were using as wireless extenders). It's a bit of a beast but damn is it good! It's not in it's final home yet while we make sure everything is working OK hence the messy wires.

Next up was the combination of two cheap switches into one much better quality one to carry our load in the living room. For this we have a Netgear GS108 eight port gigabit switch.

All of these lovely devices were connected with brand new Cat 5e cables to ensure maximum bandwidth utilisation. So far so good. We have better connectivity both wired and wireless with none of the hassle and problems that we always seemed to experience using BT Home Hubs. It wasn't a cheap upgrade but I have a feeling that it was worth it! The router is so configurable that it's going to take  me ages to work out how to use it properly. New learning experiences are always good!