Networking help needed

[rssmrry]

Okay guys, I'm completely out of ideas and need some expert input.  

 

I've been trying to get my home network set up just right but can't seem to get things working smoothly.  So I'm ready to start again.

 

Here's a cross section of my house with the locations of the device:

 

The Man Cave PC has a hard drive with all the media I want to be shared across the network to be available for the two XBMC devices + my phone + my dad's tablet.

I'm not fussed if the XBMC has internet access but it'd be a bonus I guess.

I have a TP-Link WA-901ND which I put on the first floor but I'm not fussed as to where this goes, but the Virgin Media Superhub (so-called) has really poor Wi-Fi strength so I've disabled that a while back and used the WAP.  

I have had the devices connected as shown here:

All the devices that can be wired are wired directly - no powerline adapters etc.

 

When I had this set up initially I had issues with the Man Cave PC and the Family PC being assigned the same IP so I turned of DHCP on the superhub and the WAP and assigned static IP addresses to all the devices (wired and wireless) connecting to the network.

This seemed to do the trick for that issue.  However we're now struggling.  

 

When we're watching a TV show from the man cave PC on the XBMC downstairs and someone goes on the internet on the family PC the XBMC starts to have stuttering and buffering issues.  However if I'm streaming media from the man cave PC to my phone via the wifi (which bypasses the superhub) it doesn't stutter when the XBMC is clearly struggling. 

 

The internet speeds seem to be affected when one computer is using the internet (not just raw speed but also connection quality - ping can go up quite a bit).

Virgin Media have been out and replaced the Superhub but were unwilling to look at the other issues.  Needing some advice on what to do.

 

Any thoughts?  If you need more info please let me know I've tried to give as much in advance as I can.

[Eniqmatic]

Can you bypass the "Superhub" from XMBC to the GB switch please?

 

Or do you have another router/hub you can put it in it's place? As for the DHCP issue, did you have two devices setup to dish out DHCP?

[rssmrry]

Should be able to, but the switch will have to have input from the hub as I need internet on the man cave PC.

DHCP was enabled on the hub but didn't seem to assign things correctly as I was getting the conflicts.

I do have an old linksys router but I need to use the hub to get the internet from the cable to ethernet. Wish I could take virgin media's hardware out of the equation!

[Guest]

try and knock the hub out ompletely from the network, that might help.

[rssmrry]

try and knock the hub out ompletely from the network, that might help.

Closest I can get to that is using hub in modem mode then using the old linksys router - should hopefully work - have had issues accessing the set up when connecting the linksys router via another device though, I'll try that tomorrow evening and see how I go.  

 

Any further advice in the meantime most welcome.

 

Thanks for the help so far guys!

[1hitwonder]

Whats the model of the linksys router?     Is it possible to move the gigabit switch downstairs and put it where you were planning on putting the linksys switch.  then hardwire the line upstairs directly to the man cave pc and take the other Pi offline just for the the time being for testing.   I have a couple of older linksys routers and I have found they mainly have 100Mb switches built in.  Which depending on the stream, internet usage, ect... may also be a bottleneck just like we are suspecting the superhub being in your network traffic...  

[rssmrry]

Erm it seems to be working now.  I spent ages faffing about trying to get the superhub in modem mode and giving me access to the internet when connected via the linksys router managed to get connected but was very slow. 

 

Gave up said 'sod it, I'll go to the computer repair store and get the guy there to look at the network' but put it back to the original configuration with DHCP enabled (but reserved IPs for most devices connected regularly).  Now the problems I seemed to have are no more.  So I have no idea what I did but it's working.  I may have to call on you again should that stop being the case!

 

Thanks for the help gang!