Hands on: Make your own media server

Networking
Networking performance is crucial for any server, and none more so than a media server – after all, this machine could be streaming high-bandwidth video to multiple devices simultaneously, and the last thing you want is choppy playback.

It’s tempting to think wireless is up to the job, but unless you’re streaming audio or low-bandwidth video to perhaps just one or two devices, you could be disappointed. It’s revealing to note Microsoft’s recommendations for wireless streaming to the Xbox 360 are to avoid the popular 802.11g standard and go for the less congested 802.11a instead.

While the draft or final 802.11n standards provide more breathing space, you simply can’t beat actual cables for networking performance. They’re considerably quicker, more secure and much cheaper than wireless too. If you are going wired, we’d also recommend gigabit equipment. It may not deliver 10 times greater performance than 100Mbit in practice, but it’s certainly quicker and surprisingly affordable to implement.

All you need is a gigabit network interface controller in every PC on your network (these cost around £15, but many PCs already have them as standard), decent Cat 5e cabling (again cheap and widespread), and a gigabit switch to connect them. Basic eight-port models like the Netgear GS608 can cost less than £50. It makes sense, especially if you’re considering streaming high-definition video.

Choosing an operating system
When you’re building a server, most people naturally think of installing a proper server operating system, but these are overkill for media-sharing requirements. For example, if you only need to make files available to a network, you could simply right-click a folder in Windows XP and then enable Sharing.

In fact, if your only requirement for a media server is to make files available on a network, you could get away with something much simpler still. Network-attached storage (Nas) devices are designed to simply house one or more hard disks and make their contents available on a network – see box above.

A Nas device would be fine for clients that are intelligent enough to pull content from a network share, but most streaming appliances require software to be installed on the media server itself. Consequently while a Nas device could happily deliver data to PCs, most wouldn’t be sufficient to serve files to, say, an Xbox 360 or a Slim Devices Squeezebox.

Although a handful of streaming appliances can support alternative operating systems, most if not all are designed to work with desktop versions of Windows. Some appliances are a little more specific though. While the Xbox 360 can stream music and photos from any Windows XP system running Windows Media Connect, if you want to stream video, recorded TV shows or schedule new recordings, you’ll need a PC running Windows Media Center Edition 2005 or later.

Speaking of TV, if you also want your media server to record shows, it’ll clearly need to be equipped with software and hardware to do it. Again some TV tuners and video recording programs will run on versions of Linux, but most are designed for desktop Windows operating systems.

So ultimately, while different people will want different things from their media server, there’s almost no need to go for a dedicated server operating system. Most people will get the functionality they require from desktop versions of Windows or Linux, while some could be perfectly well served by a simple Nas device.

Planning for the future
The most successful projects are those that have been carefully planned in advance, and we hope this month’s Hardware column has prompted you to think about what you’d need from a media server. Next month we’ll put together a system designed to satisfy many requirements, but in the meantime, if you’re running a Nas device or media server, we’d love to hear how it’s working out.