Home network setup

[Tarnished]

Hey everyone, I've been reading through threads here for the first time and have loved the ideas that are shared, the community feeling, and the obvious knowledge of the members. I have a few questions as a new and learning home networker, mainly looking for suggestions and tips as I delve into all this.

 

My wife and I are building/buying a new custom home. I let the contractor know that I wanted ethernet drops (Cat 6) in certain places, all terminating with a patch panel in the laundry room. Turns out the electrician was lazy (contractor's words) and used cat5e (bye future proofing) and only did six drops. One to each of the three bedrooms, one to a sitting room, one to an office area and one to living room, but hey at least there is a patch panel.

 

My current plan is to get DSL -- Because: we only have two ISPs in town, the cable guys have data caps, plan i would get would be 150/10, capped at 250GB/mo for $95/mo. I'd rather get DSL which will be 25/10, no data cap for $80/mo. Here's where I'm looking for suggestions; I'll go from DSL broadband modem (probably going to be a modem/router combo the ISP provides) to my own router, then router to 8 port netgear switch (open to suggestions on best switch for easy residential use) and then from 6 ports on netgear switch to the corresponding 6 drops on patch panel to the various areas around the house.

 

Originally I had asked the electrician to do multiple runs to office and living room, but he only did 1 ea, so my main question is what is the best solution to get hardline connections to multiple devices at those locatons without compromising speed/reliability/functionality. Current plan is to just use another 5 port netgear switch at those locations, I want the fastest speeds I can get over LAN (gigabit in my case), does daisy chaining switches compromise that speed? Ideally I want to have a server in the laundry room directly connected to the switch there that will house all the media files to be streamed off apple TV, Xbox in the LR and on the computer/s in the office area. Suggestions? Did I get most of this right? Recommendations on gear to buy? What I had envisioned so far was to get a tripplite enclosure to hang in front of the patch panel to house modem and router, along with a UPS, fans, server, etc.

 

I just want to make this as clean as I can before the house is done. Thanks in advance guys.

[The Evil Overlord]

Well first things first.

I'd call the electrician and tell him to fix his laziness at his cost before you report him, seeing as you paid for a specific installation, and he didn't deliver. (if applicable to your locale, in the UK there are agencies you can report shoddy workmen to)

As for the rest, I'll refrain as there are many users here who are better knowledged in this field to help.

[DConnell Member]

Paging @BudMan!

[Tarnished]

15 minutes ago, The Evil Overlord said:

Well first things first.

I'd call the electrician and tell him to fix his laziness at his cost before you report him, seeing as you paid for a specific installation, and he didn't deliver. (if applicable to your locale, in the UK there are agencies you can report shoddy workmen to)

As for the rest, I'll refrain as there are many users here who are better knowledged in this field to help.

I wish it were that simple Evil Overlord. Unfortunately it is the contractor's (who is building my house) electrician, and the contractor went all the while assuring me that it was all going the way I asked. Now, I actually got in to look at saw the 1 coax/1 ethernet wallplates, I was pretty livid, but now everything is up, as I said wallplates, drywall textured and painted and finished and molding is done, so I don't want to put my wife through seeing all that torn up just to run a few extra cables (not to mention rerunning everything with cat 6a, I would do it in a heartbeat if it were just I who was invested...). Also I haven't paid anyone yet for that extra work so that will definitely be quite the negotiating tool.

 

Apart from that I would love to hear if you have any preference or recommendations on networking hardware (routers, switches, servers setups, etc.), but I wouldn't want you to stick your neck out there to only be torn down by others' opinions of the best gear 

[The Evil Overlord]

Sorry to come back to this point, I understand the wish to move on, but that is their problem not yours, especially if you were given assurances that it would be wired to your specifications, any extra work or materials will have to come out of their pocket, not yours, as it wasn't your mistake.

But as to the actual network

@BudMan @sc302 and @Mando

are 3 names that popped up in my head, I know other members here who are as skilled, and possibly better skilled in home networks.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

yes definitely don't be afraid to hound them for not following your specifications, you have the legal ground here most likely.

 

evil overlord has you covered with his name drops. Budman and crew are excellent when it comes to network setup

[+BudMan MVC]

So did you get a discount that he did not use 6A?  And only 5e?  The good news is for future is you should be able to get 5gbps on that 5E when 802.3bz becomes more available.  There are nics and 1 switch that I know of that can do 802.3bz or 2.5, 5 gbps..  But the switch is really 10ge with bz support so its like 800$

 

I would not recommend any sort of switch that is not smart enough to do vlans..  The dlink dgs1100 make small DGS-1100-05, and DGS-1100-08 which are smart enough to do vlans and are cheap $30...  I would stay away from the cheap tp-link 5 and 8 port gig switches.  That company doesn't really understand the point of vlans - and their small line doesn't allow you to remove vlan 1 from ports.. So its a mess - they just recently admitted its a problem and are suppose to be coming out with some beta software.. But until that is fixed I would not buy them.. the low end netgear and that dlink mentioned can do vlans just fine and are in the $30 range..   I personally would get something a bit fancier especially where your patch room (MDF) this is where your internet will come in and all your runs come into right.. There I would put something a bit more fancy with the port density you require to run to all your locations.. I am a big fan of the cost and feature set of the cisco sg300 line.. The 10 port is about 120$ currently on amazon.

 

As to daisy chain.. This does create a bottle neck.. in that all traffic is no forced onto the small 2 lane highway vs the 8 lane FreeWay...

 

 

So in a nutshell your network would be something like this.. That gig bottleneck only comes into play for certain scenarios since your internet is not going to be anywhere close to gig.. 25/10 - like dialup.. You still use AOL? sorry couldn't help myself heheh.. Dude 150 would be ok, but 250GB cap is a bit low.. But do the math are you going to peg your 25 down all month?  I mean peg it... Where is doing 25mbps down.. It would take you 22 hours fully saturated 25 down to be able to hit that 250GB cap..  What do you do with your internet?  Stream movies I guess.. How many streams... 250GB is a lot of streaming movies..  Netflix on high HD is about 3GB per hour... So with a 250GB cap that would be 80 hours of shows a month..  That is a lot of netflix

 

What happens if you go over the 250?  Do you get charged $ does your internet go off, does the speed drop?  To which plan you should choose - really need to understand your internet use... How many clients what do you do?  If your just browsing and watching a normal amount of video streaming a month.. 250GB is huge amount of data to burn through..   I would be more up for the speed..

 

But back to your daisychain problem.. Either of your plans are not gig or higher by any means.  So the only place your daisy chain of switches either downstream from your router or from that switch would come into play.. So if computers on the left wanted to pull files/videos from computers right.. They would have to share that 1 gig connection..  The only time that would be a problem is if they were all trying to move files at the same time.. Then it would be a bit slower.. But lets say they were all streaming movies from each other.. To use up gig at 4k streams you would need a lot of multiple streams running.. What is the bitrate of movies.. What encoding did use.. Typical 4k is going to be 60-80mbps, lets call it real high bitrate your talking 120mbps on a 4k..  So to use up your gig bottleneck between your switches you would have more than 6 streams at the same time at 120mbps and that would only be 720.. Lets say your gig isn't really getting gig which should be in the low 900s..  Before you saw an issue.

 

Unless your talking a lot of clients on the end of the gig pipe that you created to the downstream switch... All pushing large amounts of data very fast, your bottleneck is not going to be any sort of problem..  Now where that gig pipe is more of a issue is if you had vlans and say all the different machines on the right side were in different vlans.  And for vlan A to talk to B has to be routed at the router.. Well then now you could have a bit of a problem if you ramp up the number of clients doing this..  Be cause your traffic would cross over that gig pipe twice.. Once to get to the router, and then back down the new vlan to talk to the client next to it.  In such a scenario with clients moving large amounts of data between each other then maybe that gig uplink could be a problem.

 

Without understanding the data flow between all your different end devices, and if your going to segment and where the routing would happen, etc.  Its hard to say if you would see a problem..  But in a simple network with just your different clients wanting to get to the internet which is only 150 or 25 in your case.. Then no that gig bottleneck between your switches is not going to be an issue.

 

Now there will be a bit of cost of latency.. While switches do move packets pretty freaking fast, they are store and forward so lets call it 10 mico seconds.. or .000010 seconds.. Normal switch might be only 2 microseconds.  I have never looked into what the switching latency is on a cheap 30$ switch.. But its going to be really low!!  So your daisy chain sure would be adding a few micro seconds latency across your network when talking to clients on through 2 switches..

 

In a few year years you should be able to run 5gbps over that 5e so your run between switch is now 5x what you have now..  So while I would be ###### that they didn't put in what I wanted, and how many I wanted.. Its not really the end of the world here..  Worse case maybe you could use the current run to pull through a fiber and now you could do 10ge or even 40ge between your switches, etc..

 

I really would suggest you get smart switches..  Once you put a mix of devices in a room, your prob going to want to segment some of them.. For example - any sort of iot device, camera, echo, thermostat, media stick, etc.  Not really a good idea to put everything on the same flat network..

 

Post up what sort of devices are going to be on your network, where located, what sort of data you plan on moving between different devices.. And we could discuss setting up this network correctly and security.. How many wifi devices are you talking?  How big is the house - where are the wifi devices going to be used.  More than likely your going to want to place AP in different parts of the house.. etc.

[Tarnished]

6 hours ago, BudMan said:

Post up what sort of devices are going to be on your network, where located, what sort of data you plan on moving between different devices.. And we could discuss setting up this network correctly and security.. How many wifi devices are you talking?  How big is the house - where are the wifi devices going to be used.  More than likely your going to want to place AP in different parts of the house.. etc.

Budman, that is a lot to wrap my head around, I'm new to this, and I greatly appreciate your time is going through all this for me.

 

First of all, I'm in Alaska, so AOL/Dial-up equivalents is what we have to work with... Those are the two options I have, the slightly faster cable and the 25/10 DSL. I have used the Cable for a few years, used to be $85/mo for the 250 cap, our family of four hit it every month, where it then slows to crawling (512 kbps I think), with movie & xbox game downloads, live tv streaming, and netflix/amazon streaming. I have a movie library on an external drive that I've been accessing thru home sharing, but I'd like to upgrade that with the move if I can. We access the internet with a windows PC, iMac, two macbook pros, apple tvs, ipads, iphones, smart switches, and xbox. Connected via ethernet will be a windows pc, an imac, a windows server, and an apple tv, that will all have their own drop straight to the main switch in the laundry room, the devices connected via ethernet via the secondary switch in living room will be xbox one, apple tv, and sonos sound sys (your comment about latency gave me some apprehension because I spend time online gaming on the xbox one and want that connection to be perfect, should be fine, but still).

 

Here is the general layout of our house (ours is custom and bigger, but this was the base plan, small because, you know, Alaska, which will be good for wifi coverage):

 

 

Patch panel is in "Util" on the wall right of the washer, thats where DSL will come in, and the drops also come in. Also where I'd like to put an enclosure housing the modem, router, ups, server, etc. House is about 1700 sq ft. no brick/cement walls, just drywall, so I'd love to hear what router you'd recommend for this application because we use wireless clients a lot. I'll mainly be using the network to stream music, movies, house large RAW files (photographer here) to access on my two machines, and maybe delving into the intermediate/advances aspects of what my network can do in the future, hence my OCD with getting it optimized now and learning what is best.

 

Addressing the daisy chain problem, I know that I won't possibly be using up that 5e line, switch to switch, to its max with one device, probably not even between two at 400-500mbits each, but could that latency problem be fixed by simply running 5e direct from router to patch panel to living room switch, and connected devices, surpassing the larger switch altogether? All devices should still be able to communicate via router, correct? Albeit at a nominally slower speed (i.e. server with movies>8port switch>router>5port switch>apple tv), maybe see some buffering issues? I guess I don't know until I test it out, but trying to weed out problems theoretically here I guess.

 

Your comment about getting 5gbps in the future gave me hope. I haven't yet paid for the cable running that was done, so I will be negotiating the balls off that. One quick thing I wanted to ask is that I am planning on putting in some two security cams. One under covered entry and one out back, top right corner of the floor plan. These would have to connect wirelessly considering I didn't run poe ethernet there. One, I believe 10mbps upload will be good enough for the cams, but I'd like to hear your opinion. Two, I need a router good enough to give me a consistent connection for these things, they'll be able to upload directly to an FTP server, these are kind of a priority so if you have any suggestions to optimize a setup like that I'd love to hear about it.

 

In all, I'm not worried about any of my clients' connection to the internet, but I would like to optimize storing files to a centralized server as close to gigabit as I can get. Thanks for your help.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

2 hours ago, Tarnished said:

First of all, I'm in Alaska, so AOL/Dial-up equivalents is what we have to work with... Those are the two options I have, the slightly faster cable and the 25/10 DSL. I have used the Cable for a few years, used to be $85/mo for the 250 cap, our family of four hit it every month, where it then slows to crawling (512 kbps I think), with movie & xbox game downloads, live tv streaming, and netflix/amazon streaming. I have a movie library on an external drive that I've been accessing thru home sharing, but I'd like to upgrade that with the move if I can. We access the internet with a windows PC, iMac, two macbook pros, apple tvs, ipads, iphones, smart switches, and xbox. Connected via ethernet will be a windows pc, an imac, a windows server, and an apple tv, that will all have their own drop straight to the main switch in the laundry room, the devices connected via ethernet via the secondary switch in living room will be xbox one, apple tv, and sonos sound sys (your comment about latency gave me some apprehension because I spend time online gaming on the xbox one and want that connection to be perfect, should be fine, but still).

Have you thought about looking into Satellite Internet? The speed/reliability has improved lately from what I hear and may be a viable option in a rural area such as Alaska

[Tarnished]

1 hour ago, Brandon H said:

Have you thought about looking into Satellite Internet? The speed/reliability has improved lately from what I hear and may be a viable option in a rural area such as Alaska

Brandon, it would be ideal to have satellite as another option. We live in one of the larger cities here, but unfortunately satellite internet is even more expensive than the other ISPs mentioned above. To add insult to injury we live in a rainforest, in the shadow of a rather large mountain, so the rabbit ears can't even pick up one OTA channel... I guess that's the cost of living in the most beautiful state in the Union. 

[+BudMan MVC]

Dude the daisy chain latency was kind of a joke on my part.. your talking MICRO seconds... I bolded it even.. a typical switch will add a couple of micro seconds - again .000002 sort of thing.. You would only be worried about such latency if you were doing highspeed trading and would be doing something like cut-through switching..   This is type of switch starts forwarding forwarding a frame before the whole frame has been received.. Not your typical store and forward switch that has to receive the whole frame before it can send it on which ads the MICRO seconds delay...

 

Forget I brought up the latency of a switch think of it as ZERO...  So no daisy chaining is not going to be a problem for you..

 

If you home run everything to the main switch, then yes you remove the gig uplink being shared by multiple devices.  Look up how a switch works... So device A on port 1, can talk to Device B on port 2 at full gig, while devices on port 3 and 4 also have full gig.. Upto the limit of the backplane of the switch... So for example the backplane on my sg300-28 is 56Gbps at a 64 byte packet.. Or at 41.67M packets per second, etc.

 

Your not going to have any issues with your daisy chain idea... Your not doing anything that would come close to touching it... Now if you said you had multiple people moving your 100GB video files they were editing across the 1 gig uplink to your NAS that could do 500MBps throughput to your disks, etc.  Then you might see some slowdown with the gig uplink..

 

As I said you could stream 7 4k very HIGH bitrate movies without seeing any sort of issue with only 1 gig uplink shared by multiple users..

 

[Tarnished]

Awesome. Thanks Budman, I know latency won’t be an issue, I just was wondering if there would be any network efficiency improvement by going from switch 2 directly to router instead of switch 2 to switch 1 to router. 

 

I guess all I have left to ask of everyone is what gear you would recommend I get. You mentioned I can get smart switches (Cisco model), but what about a good router that will work with my floor plan and give decent upload to my wireless outdoor security cams. Suggestions on what to get to house an ftp server/nas? Tips on what to avoid?

 

thanks. 

[+BudMan MVC]

Ftp server - oh my gawd dude... been dead for 10 years!!!  Why would you have any use for ftp.. Run nextcloud or owncloud if you want/need access to your files.  Or simple kloudspeaker, etc.  Or use sftp which is secure and only requires 1 port through your nat.. Not the mess that is control and data channels in active or passive mode through nats if not 2 of them with nat on both sides client and server..

 

As to a router - like off the shelf soho wifi router. I have zero to recommend they are all utter pieces of crap toys   But if your stuck with one of them - hope it runs 3rd party firmware like dd-wrt or openwrt which can make those off the shelf boxes actual perform decent and ad features that are needed, etc.

 

If you want to do wifi right get some AP and properly place them..  Which when you had the runs put in you should of had runs put into the ceilings for proper placement of AP if you wanted them..   You might be able to get away with 1 in the hallway, but you also might want to put 1 in the great room and mbr in your drawing.

 

As to both switches into router vs switches into switch and then into router - would all depend on your flow of data and if your doing vlans, etc.  And what uplinks to the router your going to have that would be routing between your vlans..

 

What is the budget..  For wifi right now would say go with the unifi stuff.. Have 3 of them in my house - love them!!  They freaking rock.  True AP powered by poe, very reasonable cost a AC lite model is 80$ while a PRO version runs you $130..  I have a pro, like and lr models..

 

if all your going to do is 1 flat network, you could go with the usg 3p from unifi its only about $100 and if your not wanting to do anything fancy it can do some good speeds it handled my 500/50 without issue.  They are working on it, etc.  Its going to be way better than any soho wifi router you pick up at the computer store for sure..   It is missing some stuff for sure - but they are actively working on adding new features all the time..   They are working on adding IPS currently and their dpi info is nice eye candy to what is going on in your network, etc.  They have some limits to what you can do with dns and dhcp, and setting up ipv6 is painful currently as well as say openvpn server..   But it is coming along and the price point is great for sure..

 

If you want the cats meow for a router hands down go with pfsense.  You can put it on your own hardware or buy an appliance from them... The sg-1000 is very home budget priced at 150, the next model the sg3100 is more at $350.. I am running the sg4860.. Not sure if the $750 price tag is in your budget or not?  But there are many that just buy a 200$ mini box and run it on there and very happy with them..   If you happen to have an old PC laying around that would make for a great start into pfsense - just add a nic or 2 to it and away you go... with your low speed internet you sure would not need a rocketship of hardware..

[Tarnished]

Awesome. Considering I am not a networking nerd though I think ill just pick up the Asus rt ac1700 or something... Considering none of the clients are going to be more than 35 ft from the router any time we are using them. So I guess what I was asking is if anybody had to stoop down to the level of crappy, consumer-grade, cannon-fodder routers which one would they buy? But I guess the answer is none, so any will do, or I guess I can just trust the expert reviewers on Amazon for that one.

 

The FTP server was in reference to a security cam I've been eyeing (Netatmo Presence) because it allows for backup of videos to an ftp server instead of paying for sub based cloud service for a monthly fee. I guess it doesn't have to be FTP, I could route those filed to be saved to an external HD connected to the router I guess, so no worries.

 

Thanks Yalls.

[+BudMan MVC]

whatever crap box you pick.. Make sure its on this list

 

https://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices

 

Atleast then when you get fed up with its crappyness firmware you can put something on it that is stable and has actual features..

[+BudMan MVC]

5 hours ago, Tarnished said:

Considering I am not a networking nerd

Then why do you care if he put in 5e vs 6a?

[Tarnished]

4 hours ago, BudMan said:

Then why do you care if he put in 5e vs 6a?

So I can stream 10x the data in the future, like in 15 years when I can stream a VR movie to my living room from the server...

 

Or to 1-up Jerry when he comes over bragging about his 5e runs... Duh 

 

PS, I'd feel much better if you validated my choice in getting the ASUS AC1750 by patting my back and saying something like, "That's a good router for the price". I can always upgrade right? It's $80...

[+BudMan MVC]

Sorry its not a "good" anything its a POS soho toy   Will it work sure.. Does it support 3rd party firmware?  If so then sure get it - I would not suggest any soho router that does not support 3rd party firmware.  The problem with such devices is that company X comes out with model Y, they forget all about older models be it firmware fixes or added features.  While 3rd party will fix ###### and add new features even, etc.  For many years to come on that hardware while the company that made it will just say buy the new shiny model, it does XYZ speeds, etc..

 

If you want to 1-up Jerry you should of ran fiber and say hey Jerry look at my network I can run 40ge

[+Fahim S. MVC]

^ don’t Asus have a publicly available DD-WRT firmware available for direct download from their site?

 

Dont get me wrong, it’s still a complete POS and won’t hold a candle to separate dedicated pro-sumer grade boxes. Having said that, it will also cost a whole lot less.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

On 1/1/2018 at 6:20 AM, BudMan said:

whatever crap box you pick.. Make sure its on this list

 

https://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices

 

Atleast then when you get fed up with its crappyness firmware you can put something on it that is stable and has actual features..

DD-WRT i don't think is officially developed any longer.

 

I'v been using LEDE (fork of open-wrt) on my Linksys WRT1900AC and it works great

 

I think Asus routers all have a fork of DD-WRT called Merlin based off the Asus UI. I haven't messed with this one but I hear its great as well

[+BudMan MVC]

1 hour ago, Brandon H said:

DD-WRT i don't think is officially developed any longer.

What??

 

https://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/other-downloads?path=betas%2F2017%2F12-29-2017-r34311%2F

 

Show the latest beta dated 12-29-17, r34311.. Sure looks to be developed to me.. This seems to come up quite a bit You need to follow the code not just their database of stable releases..

 

Those other options are also fantastic - my point was that the router supports 3rd party.. dd-wrt is most supported firmware and easiest to install normally over say openwrt, etc.  As long as it supports 3rd party then whatever hardware he buys should be ok..

 

Right on the FAQ btw

"First of all, DO NOT USE THE ROUTER DATABASE, it is old and outdated."

[Brandon H Supervisor]

4 minutes ago, BudMan said:

What??

 

https://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/other-downloads?path=betas%2F2017%2F12-29-2017-r34311%2F

 

Show the latest beta dated 12-29-17, r34311.. Sure looks to be developed to me.. This seems to come up quite a bit You need to follow the code not just their database of stable releases..

 

Those other options are also fantastic - my point was that the router supports 3rd party.. dd-wrt is most supported firmware and easiest to install normally over say openwrt, etc.  As long as it supports 3rd party then whatever hardware he buys should be ok..

 

Right on the FAQ btw

"First of all, DO NOT USE THE ROUTER DATABASE, it is old and outdated."

you're right, it's been several months since i've looked at the dd-wrt pages and it seems they have picked up development again

though it seems they're limited on what devices they support still which is where the open source projects come in handy

[+BudMan MVC]

I still don't get where you get that idea.. Look at the releases there is clearly over 26 beta releases in 2017 so that is a release more than every other week.. There is not a single gab in the releases that ever go "months" 

 

I think where this comes from is someone hits the website and sees old dates on it and assumes there in no traction..