New Home Network. Help Please!!!!!

Associate
Joined
1 Nov 2017
Posts
6
Hello. My first post and its a lengthy one I'm afraid, but to you guys probably very simple.

Moved into our new house almost two years ago and as I go through each room I've been running cat6 UTP. I've never done anything like this before but enjoying the learning curve.

So far all three kids have newly decorated rooms with the eldest two having four modules each (two behind the tv's and two under their desks. Youngest child has two modules behind his tv. I've run four modules to my lounge and plan to run at least four to my guest room/cinema room and two to my bedroom with possibly another to the kitchen.

Plan to keep everything in a data cabinet in the loft and attached to the chimney stack. I have two runs of cat6 running from my study to the loft and was thinking of running one direct from the router in the study to a 24 port unmanaged switch. I will need to install two, possibly three WAP's (currently looking at ubiquity UAP-AC-LR unifi if this means that I can get away with just two or the cheaper UAP three pack (300mbps)) and later add four cameras to the outside of the house so would need atleast a further 7 or 8 poe switch ports, so after reading Blintz's thread, will look at getting a 16 port switch again unmanaged. As its all being kept in the loft I thought I'd add a twin fan to keep everything cooler in the summer months and I'd also need to add a 6 plug surge protected psu.

For the above would it be better to have everything connected from the ports to a patch panel or is it not necessary on a home network set-up?

The second cable length running from my router in the study I am looking to run about 45 metres to my guest room/cinema room. this would go to a four or five port unmanaged switch and in turn can feed to the TV, Blu-Ray etc. In this room I also plan to add a NAS drive (currently looking at QNAP TS452A) and was thinking of connecting this up via one of the HDMI to my TV and using the four RJ35 points to feed four cables back to the 24 port switch (this in turn would hopefully mean that the kids can each access the NAS simultaneously without any bottle-necking or lag). I plan to store media prior to viewing anyway but with a cable going to this room direct from my router I'm hoping it will be able to stream on the odd occasion. Or would it be better to run both cables from the router direct to the 24 port switch first to prevent bottle-necking.

Whilst on the subject of routers, I currently use the one EE provided (Brightbox 2) which I understand is basically a BT hub 5 now. Would it be in my interest to look at getting a better rouetr whilst doing all of this and keeping the router on a rackmount in the cabinet, ie would there be any benefit to this?

Really sorry if this is a lot to ask advice on for a first post. However, I have a wife lurking over my shoulder atm, and if I can get it right, then she won't mind about the additional cost. If I get it wrong however, then I can see that my life will not be worth living. :)

If I haven't explained this properly then please let me know and I can try to draw a layout of what I have so far and what I intend having once finished.
 
As far as I can understand it...

Patch panel is not needed, but will make everything tidier and possibly easier to manage in the future.

Keep the cameras and NVR if you have one on the same switch maybe, so it won't affect the rest of the internal traffic too much. The APs I would be tempted to try keep on the main switch if possible.

Seeing as everything will be going through the main 24 port switch, I would be tempted to have the NAS connected to that so everything else on the network can equally reach it without major bandwidth bottlenecking.

Assuming you have FTTC, see how the supplied EE router goes and if it can handle your giant network. If not, get a Huawei HG612 modem and whatever router you want, up to you if you want it on the rackmount or not.
 
As far as I can understand it...

Patch panel is not needed, but will make everything tidier and possibly easier to manage in the future.

Keep the cameras and NVR if you have one on the same switch maybe, so it won't affect the rest of the internal traffic too much. The APs I would be tempted to try keep on the main switch if possible.

Seeing as everything will be going through the main 24 port switch, I would be tempted to have the NAS connected to that so everything else on the network can equally reach it without major bandwidth bottlenecking.

Assuming you have FTTC, see how the supplied EE router goes and if it can handle your giant network. If not, get a Huawei HG612 modem and whatever router you want, up to you if you want it on the rackmount or not.

Would it have a great affect if the cameras and AP's were on the same switch (the one that had POE) as I was hoping to keep the cost down a bit by buying one 24 port switch with no POE and one 24 port switch with say 12 POE. If I were to use two cross over cables, then would this help with the bandwidth at all?

I did intend to keep the four cables coming from the NAS to the switch connecting direct to TV's and bedrooms, so your advice there has been appreciated and confirmed my thoughts.

Or do you know of any 48 port switches that are unmanaged and have POE that aren't seriously expensive?

Many Thanks
 
You appear to be trying to over engineer things and are making assumptions about bandwidth requirements that aren't justified.

If you want multiple links between switches it isn't going to happen with anything unmanaged. You'll just get a lot of flashing lights and a broken network. For more information search for LACP.

Also be careful about multiple connections from the NAS to any unmanaged switch for the same reasons.
 
Your media requirements won’t saturate your network. Gigabit will probably allow a dozen 4K streams without breaking sweat, so don't worry about the stuff in the cinema room - I suspect the NAS would be the bottleneck before the network. Run multiple cables for redundancy and future proofing but don’t hook them up. Also echo the concerns about not having multiple links between devices, which will break your network without the right type of switches.

You ask if you should replace the router. Do you have issues with your current router you’d like to address? If so then state what they are and some recommendations will be forthcoming. For example poor WiFi will yield a different recommendation to wanting to add network wide VPN coverage.
 
Would it have a great affect if the cameras and AP's were on the same switch (the one that had POE) as I was hoping to keep the cost down a bit by buying one 24 port switch with no POE and one 24 port switch with say 12 POE. If I were to use two cross over cables, then would this help with the bandwidth at all?

If you have an NVR to keep all the camera footage then have them on their own switch. If not, then it's fine to share the switch with everything else.

Remember the Unifi APs will have PoE injectors included. It's a bit more messy but it may be cheaper than finding a switch with many PoE ports.

Just reread it and as everyone else has mentioned, don't have multiple connects between switches, that will just cause a major issue and cause nothing to work. If the switches are gigabit then one cable will be enough anyway.
 
Unless you're using smart switches with LACP enabled on those specific port groups, you can only connect one cable to your NAS and between switches. Otherwise it will just create loops and broadcast storms leaving you with a broken network.

As others have said, I doubt you'll saturate 1gb unless you're copying full files over the network. For streaming, you'll be fine.

Draw your network. draw.io is good for doing diagrams.
 
Unless you're using smart switches with LACP enabled on those specific port groups, you can only connect one cable to your NAS and between switches. Otherwise it will just create loops and broadcast storms leaving you with a broken network.

As others have said, I doubt you'll saturate 1gb unless you're copying full files over the network. For streaming, you'll be fine.

Draw your network. draw.io is good for doing diagrams.
Thanks bledd. A friend of mine at work did mention I may need link aggregation. I take it that I would need a managed switch for this then? Will this overcomplicate things and will I need to download software to manage the switch (sorry if these are basic questions but I'm new to all of this).

I take it that the link aggregation will ensure everyone will be able to access the Nas without it it slowing down or freezing.

Thanks for the heads up on draw.io will take a look at this today.
 
The chimney stack doesn't even get warm with use as I think it's lined. What do you mean by automatic fire protection equipment?

If there's a fire there - perhaps caused by an electrical short or a moth blocking a fan or a squirrel chewing a cable - then it's not going to be noticed as early as it would be if it were in the main house. At the very least you're going to need a fire alarm with a remote sounder, and preferably something that will attempt to douse the fire. Fire kills.
 
If there's a fire there - perhaps caused by an electrical short or a moth blocking a fan or a squirrel chewing a cable - then it's not going to be noticed as early as it would be if it were in the main house. At the very least you're going to need a fire alarm with a remote sounder, and preferably something that will attempt to douse the fire. Fire kills.
Good thinking mate. Thankyou. The chimney stack is however irrelevant then as it's bricked and lined inside. Like the thoughts on an alarm with remote sounder though and thanks for the advice. Will I be prudent to put fans in the cabinet to keep it all cooler in the summer months?
 
Draw up your plan (with number of cables to reach device). What LACP/link aggregation does is bond multiple connections into one virtual connection.

It allows more bandwidth between network nodes.

I'd imagine your hard drives in the Nas would become a limitation before your network.
 
Having read the OP multiple times this is a BIG home network.

As has been stated by several other posters it is fundamentally important that you draw this up. And then think about what you really want from your network.

Is it good wifi, is it fast wired connections? Do you have a budget?

For the NAS, take a look at the QNAP TS431X - that has a 10GbE SFP+ port. If you buy the right switch, you can get one with a 10GbE SFP+ port and then one DAC cable will give you a 10GbE connection between the NAS and the switch. You won't saturate that as the other connections will only be 1GbE at this point. And it will destroy a LAG'd connection.

I went through a very similar process when I put in my first home/office network and I blew quite a bit of money trying to save money. In the end I bought what I should have bought in the first place. A 48-port PoE switch. No messing about!

Yes, it's a LOT of money. Probably £700 for one with SFP+ ports as well but that will handle everything and anything you can throw at it.

You could also get a 16 port PoE switch and a 48 port non-PoE switch for the same money, which technically gives you more flexibility.

Buy a 48 port patch panel and a 6U 19" rackmount cabinet, and cable everything back into it. I like the snap-in CCS tool free modules (from Cable Monkey) but a straight punch-down patch panel is every bit as good, if not better. Then patch cable all of that from the patch panel into the switch and basically, you're good to go.

And if you're running Unifi access points, get Unifi switches and a Unifi router (USG) and then you will have a proper system to go forward with. Don't neglect the option of the Unifi AP-AC-IW access points which double as a twin RJ45 socket - so you get a room's worth of bgn/AC wifi and 2 RJ45 1GbE connections for 1 CAT6 cable run. And one of those RJ45's is a PoE+ port. That's a lot of functionality. Again, not cheap at about £80 each, but it's huge value for money.

And then, there is the choice of cameras! That in itself is a whole thread I suspect.
 
Last edited:
I'd definitely look into the spending "good" money on a router that is capable of routing VLAN's with this size of network. UniFi or pfSense is something you should look into. It will give you a massive amount of control of your network and allow you to manage firewall rules per VLAN (WiFi, Wired, Kids, Guest etc etc). They are not as complex to work with as you may think at first glance. Don't bother with unmanaged switches as stated above.
 
You know your own loft and how hot it gets.

Fans will help if the entire loft isn’t too warm.

You could possibly duct in fresh air from outside.
Indeed. In my experience lofts are very hot and humid in summer which isn't a good environment for PC and network kit.
 
Back
Top Bottom