home networking, how are people setting the faster stuff up?

phill1978

phill1978

phill1978

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hi,

im in the process of looking into home network overhaul. I currently run a 300mbs wireless lan and get fairly decent results although in truth file transfer isn't going to be upto scratch once multiple devices are in use and latency can still present itself which im cool with as its still an amazing technology. wireless will still be in use.

so, im looking into an unmanaged switch just a unit that is 1gbps connection for 8 - 12 ports into a router which i would ideally like to be able to supply more than one uplink from the switch too...so my first question is, if i have a router with lets say x2 gig ethernet connections and a 12-8 port switch can i tie up x2 1gbps ports in LAG and increase the bandwidth to the router?
what kind of home / small business hardware can do this?
it seems to me if you have 8x1g connections but only 1xg uplink (realistically 65-80megabytes per sec) its a bottleneck (although in practice it might not be a problem its nice to get some more throughput possibility as i will want to stream 1080p and I also do archiving and gaming at same time, plus i also like the idea :p)


also excuse my lameness but collision domains..i have a single subnet and no vlans will all my traffic collide in the switch? or does auto tagging sort this stuff now?

next question, im running cables under floors is there a good way to contain the cable? tubes? trunking?

finally once i have my cable run i will be using rj45 dual outlet sockets in the room but on the other end it would seem more logical to buy a patch panel then connect cables to a switch and then uplink to a router do people who are using Ethernet here do this? or do you simply cut into the carpet underlay and then use trunking at either end to hide tidy the wires? how does this work well with multiple wires and how do you run across areas where people walk often?

sorry for all the questions :(
 
I'm not sure why you would need multiple uplinks.

The switch will manage transfers between devices plugged into the switch (and will have plenty of bandwidth on the backplane) and traffic will only hit your router as and when it needs to (Read stuff going out to and in from t'internets). Why would you need more than 1Gb/sec worth of bandwidth out of your router?

If all your devices are plugging directly into the same switch uplink to the router is irrelevant unless you have more than 1Gb/sec going out to/in from the net. Uplinks matter between switches saturated with devices, and then you chuck it over fibre modules or otherwise.
 
first, i doubt u'll need multiple connections to your router, 1 gb connection is perfectly fine.

depending on how much you are willing to spend, u could just get a basic gigabit switch with enough ports, or the more expensive smart/managed switches.

as for the traffic, the switch will send the traffic down the correct lines, thats what a switch does.

for under the floor, u could just run the cable as it is, dont really need to use trunking, trunking is best used to hide cables that might need to be ran in visible places.

how do u plan to wire up the house, do u want to send cables to lots of rooms, etc?
althou a patch panel is useful, its not required.
for a basic setup, u could just put connectors on the cables and plug them directly into the switch.

if ur looking at patch panels, do u have a rack setup for the equipment ?
if so, u might want to think about getting a rackmounted switch instead.

when wiring up the house, its best to find a central point to put the router/switch etc
lofts or under the stairs tend to be good places, as long as you can get all the cables to them. Then you just run a cable from each box to the center point.
for dual boxes, u'll need to run 2 cables, one for each connector.

when i was installing networks for a company, we just used connectors on the end and pluged them into the switch. Althou i use a patch panel for my home
 
phill1978 said:
hi,
also excuse my lameness but collision domains..i have a single subnet and no vlans will all my traffic collide in the switch? or does auto tagging sort this stuff now?
Click to expand...

When hubs were common place, everything was on 1 collision domain for the most part, but now everyone uses switches, and each port on the switch has a dedicated connection to the device on the other end, so there will not be collisions. Wireless on the other hand is a different matter, it is a shared medium and devices compete to gain access to send their data, and although there is stuff in place to try and reduce collisions it is not something that can be avoided.

So basically collisions is not something you need to worry about.


As the other replies have mentioned, using 2 uplink ports and bonding them to create a 2Gb connection is not something you should need to consider. you won't fully utilize a 1Gb link between router and switch so having a 2Gb link would be pointless. all the data going from switch to router would be heading for the internet or wireless devices, and even if you had a 50Mb internet connection and 802.11n wireless devices the data between switch and router still wouldn't exceed 1Gb. The bottlenecks in your setup will be the limitations of wireless (nothing you can change there) and the speed of your internet connection (nothing on your LAN can change that).

Hopefull that has answered some of your questions, and if you decide on just a 1Gb network then that will simplify things a lot for you as devices with port aggregation on are expensive and complex to work with.
 
Dist, many thanks my man :)

yea 2g is overkill is suppose and as mentioned not needed. i was just a thought that at some point in the future it might be relevant, i mean 80meg per sec is good if you can get this on a nice 1g cat6/5e install but hard discs are getting cheaper and faster and the size of the archiving i do is also getting bigger (so far 40gig music gets backed up to a network share via usb to computer as its faster than the wireless and 100mb ethernet)

ta for your time. i still want a managed switch though :) im sure 1g will be adequate
 
Glad I could be of help.

If you want to make sure you are future proof then simply lay cat6a, as that is capable of 10Gb over the full 100m length. That being said though, 10Gb Ethernet in a home environment is still a LONG way off as there is simply no need for it when 1Gb is enough most uses such as multiple users streaming 1080p, or archiving to a NAS. Archiving 40Gb over a 1Gb network is fine, and dont forget that even if you had a brand new NAS with high speed drives in it, the computer that is sending the information could have an older HDD that is the bottleneck.

As for selecting a managed switch I realy can't help. I've experience using unmanaged netgear gigabit switches, and 100Mb cisco switches (gigabit cisco switches, even second hand, would most likely be out of your price range), but I have no experience with consumer grade gigabit managed switches, although from what I've read you would be best looking at the HP procurve line as to my knowledge some of them are managed, gigabit, and are highly recommend.
 
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