On Home Network
On home networks, many people like to stream music and video. At my house, we have kids who like the music video, and do not want the video stream to become balky, freeze or dissolve the screen into pixels.
So, here is the complete scenario for deploying a Windows 7 64 Pro peer network– all to become, in effect, a Windows-based music machine. The home network is based on a single Windows PC hosting a shared internet connection for other machines. The Windows machine host connects to the household router (and internet) upstream, and connects downstream to a switch, creating a subnet to which are connected two or more Windows peer machines.
All this sounds only slightly elaborate, but to be frank, we have security concerns– teens, let’s say, who need to have their internet connections monitored by some “Net Nanny” type of program to help them stay out of trouble. That is why the kids will be on a subnet attached to the Windows shared connection host machine.
Now, the issue and question– with streaming music, the video quality must be acceptable, and that means more powerful hardware. On the Windows internet shared connection host machine, is it better to have a faster CPU with only 4gb to enable streaming music and video for two separate PCs downstream, or to have more RAM (8gb) and a slower CPU?
The household budget, alone, currently determines the power we can provide the streaming host machine, and we are looking at Dell refurbished corporate desktops born about 2009, running DDR2 RAM and Pentium Dual Core CPUs (for better or worse). I realize other parameters apply, but I do not have them, at the moment.
Many Windows Secrets Lounge members, also, may have kids on the household internet connection. They may need to use this shared connection host approach in order to monitor content effectively through a single gateway machine, but without slowing down the traffic so much the natives become restless.
