Home Network Redesign

While I'm happy with my home network, with the increased workload resulting from working from home and
streaming high-definition movies over the internet, I decided to explore options to increase performance and throughput with minimal cost.   Here are the areas that I decided to focus my efforts:

• Deploying "CAT6" ethernet cables to areas of the house requiring high bandwidth to replace home powerline networking equipment and wi-fi.  I still use both wi-fi and powerline, but CAT6 is my backbone
• Upgrading 10/100 network switches to gigabit. I purchased two D-Link DGS-2208 gigabit switches
• Replacing my old cable modem with a new DOCSIS 3.0 gigabit modem. I purchased the Motorola SB6120 
• I had replaced my wireless router last year with a gigabit router. I purchased the Cisco-Linksys WRT310N. Update 7 December 2010: The router failed and I replaced it with a new Netgear N600. Update 14 October 2014: replaced wi-fi router with the Netgear R7000

After the upgrade, I saw dramatically improved performance on my local area network. This is most likely due to the hardwire Ethernet and upgrading the network switches. Internet bandwidth also increased dramatically as a result of upgrading the cable modem. Charter Cable is my broadband provider and I am paying for 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload (25/3 Mbps). Before the upgrade, I was seeing 25/3 Mbps which is exactly what I was paying for. No complaints there. However, after the upgrades above, I am now seeing an average of 50/5 Mbps. I've seen as fast as 70/5 Mpps depending on the time of day. I use Speedtest.net to measure performance.

In short, I'm very happy with the upgrades and the total cost was under $250

Update 15 July 2013: Charter Cable replaced my Motorola SB6120 and a VOIP device with a single device: a Cisco DPC3208 after my VOIP service stopped working.  So far the new Cisco device is working great.