My current setup is rather simple.

A) CentOS 6.x NFS, Plexmedia Server, F@H

B) 3x Fedora 19/20 Laptops

C) WDTV Live for video playback to the TV in the living room

D) 2x older iMACs, with really only one still in daily use as the oldest (a G5) is on its last leg and has hardware about to completely fail.

E) Canon multi-function-printer, only accessible via my iMAC's due to drive conflicting issues. zero support for 64bit Linux and CUPs fails to print even when hosted on the iMACs.

No traffic on my LAN is currently encrypted. Im interested in adding authentication and encryption to my LAN. What little digging I have done has pointed me to a few HOWTO guides, but none talk about video playback performance. There are times when all 3 laptops, the WDTV, and the one active iMAC are all streaming media. As of right now there is zero issue with this. My concern with adding the extra layer for encryption is a degradation in the media playback.

Do any of you have experience in this area and can you offer pointers.

my LAN/WAN consists of 10/100/1000 switches for the wired and a dual band N for wireless.

thanks in advance.

You can simulate an encrypted network this way.

Decide on your worst case (e.g. 1 box feeding 5 videos). Put an ssh server on the bottleneck box, and stream from the 5 simultaneously.Streaming over wifi, I was reduced to 1-2 MB a minute by sshd. As I was doing a megacopy, this was a PITA.It was also encryption of encryption, as wpa2 encrypts, does it not?

Encryption on your home network will also be a pita.

interesting idea. ill play with that. thanks.