
Networking in the Home
At home I have both a wireless network (802.11bg) and most rooms are wired with Gigabit Ethernet. I found the wireless does not give me the smooth transmission of HD video that the wireline does (for a great product for capturing off the air TV, check out www.snapstream.com). Multi-stream 802.11n promises to fix these problems. What’s your experience? So beyond the obvious computer and entertainment benefits of networking, are there other things that make sense to connect? For a while, there was talk of refrigerators that would e-mail a service center if they were about to go on the fritz. In the last 30 years I’ve only had one fridge die; I’m not sure it justifies the cost of adding a network connection. Now if the fridge could keep inventory and e-mail me a shopping list on Mondays that could be cool! Power meters, alarm panels, and other already monitored devices make sense.
What would you like networked in your house?