Install 22 ethernet access points, effect on speed?

[ady88s]

Hi all,
I have a question about the feasibility of this my first network installation.

It's a 6 bedroom house over 3 floors, I want to make sure there are at least 2 ethernet ports in some rooms (which may serve as a back up if the other fails). In other rooms, I want to install 2 double sockets, 1 double in 1 area for tv/games consoles, another double for pc workstation. I'm planning 22 in total including an extra connection for a WiFi expander upstairs.

My question is: the house has a standard residential feed, will all 22 ports be fully functional? They don't necessarily need to be streaming HD Netflix at the same time but I would like to know what the likely limitations are in case some of the rooms are converted into student lets.

Which rooms/connections will get a priority feed if all are connected and being used simultaneously?

We currently have an average 36 mbps connection.

Here's the hardware I am looking at using:

TP-Link TL-SG1024D 24-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch

I am seriously considering cat 5e if there is a belief that cat 5e will hold its water for some time yet, ie the next ten years. I have concerns about the difficulty in running the sturdier cat 6 cables and turning them around corners etc without damaging them. There will be lots of corners! Alternatively, I will use a cat 6 UTP, need to see how flexible it is and what the real Vue is if any in terms of speed or future proofing.
kwmobile 24 Port Cat6 Patch Panel - 19 Inch Cat 6
None of the cables will run more than 25 metres.
Thanks for any insughts/replies, still learning here!

 

[BigT]

All 22 ports will be as functional as one another unless you deliberately want to change that. Traffic between ports, assuming all other networking equipment (like the switch you've linked to and your router) also has gigabit ports, will have plenty of bandwidth unless everyone is shifting hundreds of gigabytes of files between machines constantly.

Now when you introduce your network to your internet connection, traffic going in/out of that can only go as fast in total as the weakest link - that is 36Mbps. If we assume say an UltraHD Netlfix stream consumes 25Mbps then you can have one UHD stream to one device and still have headroom for people to move files around your network internally at near gigabit speeds. But you won't be able to stream two UHD Netflix streams as they'll both need that 36Mbps outbound connection.

In a situation where there's lots of consumption of that internet connection then priority will not be decided by a particular port by default. The router you have will do it's best by default to give everything a fair chunk. You can of course change that, but depending on what you want to do will determine how you do it. Typically you'd either introduce something called a managed switch instead of that 24 port switch you linked to or have a more sophisticated router or both. This, combined with the fact you may be letting rooms out, means you'll need something like this not just for bandwidth control but also security. You'll need to get your head around stuff like VLANs in all likelihood. Tenant in bedroom 1 really shouldn't be able to have access to tenant in bedroom 2's devices over the network. Since physically they will all be on the same infrastructure you have to separate them logically/virtually - hence VLANs.

You'll get different opinions on Cat5e vs Cat6. I'm in the camp of good quality Cat5e will be just fine.

 

[skyripper]

Which rooms/connections will get a priority feed if all are connected and being used simultaneously?

None. Unless your switch or router support traffic management.

You're confusing your LAN (local network) with your WAN (your internet connection).

Dividing up 36Mb between multiple student let's is going to need you to get a bigger internet, or implement some policies and management on the network. Or one douche user will fire up bittorrent and everyone else will get their internet going to hell.

As for the ports, will they all be operational? If your cabling works, they're plugged into the switch, and the router can handle that many clients? Yes.

But if you are going to have different tenants on the same network you will almost certainly want to look at segregating each dwelling into private networks.

 

[Rroff]

Dividing up 36Mb between multiple student let's is going to need you to get a bigger internet, or implement some policies and management on the network. Or one douche user will fire up bittorrent and everyone else will get their internet going to hell.

Bittorrent with a poorly configured client is a nightmare on shared connections even with traffic management unless you use enterprise level gear (or custom firmware consumer gear and really really know what you are doing) the connection cycling can completely kill the experience for other users even with QoS and/or other bandwidth policies in place. You could try banning it as a policy but hard to enforce and a bit over-reaching for those reasonable people who do have consideration for other users.

The main one for a shared connection is actually to QoS the upstream so no one application can saturate it as that generally keeps most things running nicely.

Best bet in my experience unless you spend a lot of money on higher end gear is to get a managed network switch that allows ports to be speed limited to arbitrary amounts and segregate the network that way (can use another switch the other side so systems can transfer between themselves at higher speeds) so that for instance if you had a section of the house that was students the final stage of that link before the router was limited to say 15-20Mbit.

 

[Stephanie Peterson]

Get a contractor in to do this, or find some tech support as incorrectly configured this could be a nightmare down the road.
Ie is your security up to snuff? (dont want people hacking across your lan) and this will happen if your bringing in people you dont know.
What will you do if one of your students uses bit torrent and you get the letter asking you to go to court?
bla bla bla.. could write a million things here.

Basically if your doing this for yourself then no prob, whack in a switch and a basic home config. However if this is going to be used by multiple tenants then your on to completely different ground and need a much more robust setup.

 

[bledd]

Main question is..

Is this just you and family or will there be tenants etc?

As long as no one goes nuts with torrents etc then you'll be fine.

 

[ady88s]

Thanks everyone for the replies, sorry about the delay in getting back, it's been a very hectic few days which started about 20 mins after I last posted!
The Tennant thing is a way off yet. I can look forward to tightening security and putting in a managed switch at that point if needed. I think I can be sure people will act responsibly with it for the meanwhile in terms of torrenting etc.
I will go with the unmanaged switch for now... I will do the install myself. I will have to learn by doing. I'm fairly confident the hardware will meet the requirements so thanks again for your input. Now I just have to execute the installation! Next I need to make a couple of smaller ethernet leads and test them for practise in readiness for the real thing
Thanks again

 

[bledd]

You shouldn't need to 'make' any cables. You should use a patch panel and wall modules.

Look at Excel or CCS cable/modules/panel. Or Fusion, tried them recently, all good.

 

[bremen1874]

Indeed, making cables gets old very fast.

There are some limited situations where I would make a cable, but generally, you can't make a cable for less than the cost of buying one (and that's ignoring the time it takes).