The was a time when internet access was relegated to the study, but these days the lounge room tends to be the heart of the home network.
Ethernet is the new black when it comes to home entertainment and you'll find a network port on the back of many Blu-ray players, PVRs, games consoles, media players and even televisions. Over time you might cobble together various bits of old routing equipment to deal with the boom in Ethernet cables and wifi points around the house, but there comes a time when you have to go back to the drawing board.
If your broadband modem/router has run out of network ports, the best option is probably to buy yourself a Gigabit network switch. Devices such as Billion's $99 BiPAC GS08 are the most simple of networking gear.
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Billion's BiPAC GS08: a full-duplex "non-blocking" switch, which handle three streaming video sessions and even an audio stream
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The GS08 is a tiny box that's just big enough to fit eight network ports on the back and a power jack. There are no instructions and no configuration pages. You just connect one port to your broadband modem and the rest to your devices. That's it - you've now got seven spare network ports to service all of your internet-hungry devices.
The BiPAC GS08 is a full-duplex "non-blocking" switch, which basically means traffic should always be able to get from A to B regardless of other traffic on the switch. It offers theoretical transfer speeds of up to 1000 Mbps between devices (a speed you'll obviously never achieve).
Put to the test, it happily handles three streaming video sessions and even an audio stream thrown in for good measure. Your average lounge room isn't likely to be more demanding than this in the near future.
Also in this series, Picking the Perfect Home Entertainment Box:
Part 2: creating a P2P season pass
Part 1: Internet video on the PS3
Buying a TV? Also see our series How to Pick a Great Flat Screen TV, And Not Get Sucked In By Marketing Hype