Network Components

Ethernet Switch 

The Ethernet switch is the connection point for all other components on the network allowing them to communicate with each other.

Minimum requirements:

• Must be a dedicated, stand alone switch. Linn recommends against using the switches built into consumer grade ADSL routers, cable modems, or wireless access points. The processing power of such devices is often shared between its various functions and is therefore not always capable of full performance.
• Must be either a 100 Mbps or 1000 Mbps full duplex switch.
• Must be capable of fully utilising all ports simultaneously. On vendor’s specification pages this is sometimes listed under a category called the “switch backplane” or the “switch bandwidth”. For an 8 port 100 Mbps switch, this “switch bandwidth” should be 1.6 Gbps. This number comes from 100 Mbps in, plus 100 Mbps out, times the 8 ports. For a 16 port gigabit switch, the “switch bandwidth” would be 32 Gbps. (2*16*1000 Mbps).

Ethernet switches that Linn have tested:

Netgear Switch FS108
Netgear Switch FS108P
Netgear Switch FS116
Netgear Switch GS108
Netgear Switch GS116
Netgear Switch FSM726

Wireless Access Point (WAP)

The WAP connects the wireless control point to the Ethernet network.

Linn recommends using a standalone wireless access point. Wireless access points built into switches and other consumer grade products are frequently (but not always) of a lower quality.

Minimum requirements:

• "Enterprise grade"
• Wireless G
• Robust connection quality

and optionally

• Power over Ethernet (PoE)

WAPs that Linn have tested:
Linksys wap200
Dlink Dwl-3200AP

NAS

Securely stores music on a hard drive array.

Placing your digital media collection on a NAS has a number of benefits:

Protects your digital media files - if the NAS has RAID capability (hard-drive redundancy), you are protected from failure of any one of the drives in your system

High availability - Many NASes draw very little power when they are idle, so they can be left permanently switched on. This means you wont have to wait for computer to boot before you can start streaming music

Additionally, some NASes are capbable of running a media server. This relieves your computer of one more task, and increases availability of your audio.

Lacie Ethernet Disk

Summary Compatible with Linn DS products, comes with Twonky Media pre-installed, easy to set-up, no RAID

No NFS
No RAID

Netgear ReadyNAS NV+

QNAP TS409 Pro

Excellent competitor to the Netgear ReadyNAS
* Suitable for DS
* Pro version has NFS support, making it suitable for Akurate Music Server system

DLink DNS 323

The DLink is a cheap NAS, with RAID 1 capability. The drive has poor firmware out of the box, (the pre-installed UPnP server is seriously broken), but it can be upgraded to run Twonky Media Server.

Installation experience of Twonky is relatively straight-forward if you are prepared to follow the instructions to install "fun_plug", (http://wiki.dns323.info/howto:fun_plug) and the Twonky installation instructions (http://www.twonkyvision.com/Download/TwonkyMedia/TM4Technicians.html)
* 2 disk SATA
* RAID 0,1,JBOD
* Linux ("busybox") based
* DHCP
* pre-installed uPnP server (DLink custom)

Additionally, the NAS runs three important pieces of software:

a. Media Server: Indexes and allows retrieval of the music from the NAS.

b. DHCP Server: Responsible for allocating IP addresses to all devices on the network.

c. Network Sharing Protocols: Allows computers to place new music on the NAS.

Media Server

• UPnP AV 1.0 certified or DNLA 1.0
• FLAC support
• Easy installation on the NAS

• Media servers tested by Linn
• Twonky Media

Wireless control point

The wireless control point provides the user interface (via the Linn GUI) for accessing music and controlling playback. The device can be either a UMPC (ultra-mobile PC), Internet Tablet, or a standard computer/laptop.

The Linn GUI runs on .NET 2.0

Minimum requirements:

UMPC

• 800 x 480
• 600MHz processor or greater, (800Mhz preferred)
• .NET 2.0
• Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC edition 2005

Internet Tablet

• Nokia N800/N810

Windows PC/laptop

• Windows XP Professional 2002
• 800 MHz processor or greater
• .NET 2.0

Specific UMPCs that Linn have tested:

Samsung Q1 (NP-Q1/V000/SUK), (NP-Q1/M02/SUK), (NP-Q1/S000/SUK), (NP-Q1/UF000/SUK) running Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC edition 2005, Version 2002 and Service Pack 2

ASUS Notebook R2H Series, 1Gb 900Mhz Celeron M, running Windows Vista Home Premium