PoE switch and APs for non-technical person

[ChrisD.]

Hey all,

My brother in law asked me to help him with his home network. He's having an extension put in, and pretty much the whole house is being ripped out so he's using the opportunity to flood wire Cat 6 around the house. It's going to be ~1800 Sq Ft, and the interior walls are not solid brick.

He's going to have the internet come in centrally downstairs, and is running a couple of Cat6 cables to the loft from there. Then from the loft he's doing double drops to each room.

Starting off, 4 PoE devices, plus 8 other connections to the rooms will hang off this switch, plus the uplink from the router/firewall. Although he may want to add additional devices in the future (another AP, or more cameras as an example). Whilst a 16 port would be sufficient now, he wants to avoid having to switch it out (pardon the pun) in the future if he needs more than 16 ports.

Ordinarily I'd suggest UniFi, but then I realised there may be cheaper options, and he is not overly technical - he just wants a set and forget setup. I can't see him having a requirement for multi gigabit connections.

He currently uses TP Link Deco in a mesh deployment which serves him well currently, so perhaps something from TP Link instead?

I'm open to suggestions as being very technical I'd have a tendency to over spec it and he's already spending a significant amount of money on the house.

 

[Caged]

I have thought about this stuff before but it's hard to look past Unifi for the big home sort of setup. Any savings you made by opting for something like Aruba InstantOn would be insignificant compared to the cost of the work being done on the house, so I am not sure price should be relevant.

Unifi is no more complicated to manage than anything else in the range, they have a live chat support option so you don't have to get involved, it auto-updates, and supports things like Wireguard VPN out of the box so if they wanted to region shift they could. At least in the cloud/app-managed space the Unifi gateways are probably the most feature complete you can get - I'm not aware of anything else that does policy based routing, for example.

So my recommendation would be spec out Unifi, and then learn a bit about how it works.

 

[Steveocee]

I think UniFi would likely be the way to go. UCG so the controller is bundled in and removes the need for a cloud key or cloud hosting.
24/48 port switch depending on how many cables are knocking around, wouldn't need to be a "full power" model if you know there will likely only be 8 or so PoE devices.
AP's - Don't spec anything below WiFi6, even "Lite" models are fine if you chuck 2 or 3 at it and they won't cost the earth in the process.

Yes there are alternatives but it won't be dramatic cost savings, I can think of "a" brand but they don't have a huge rep over here and whilst they are a cheaper alternative, I don't think the cost benefit would outweigh YOUR time learning the ecosystem to be able to have a hand in helping someone else.

 

[Glanza]

Aruba for a set and forget, we've had a way better success rate of hardware not failing since switching from Ubiquiti where cloud keys love to give up the ghost.

It does a web interface / app if required too.

 

[Caged]

Caveat with Aruba is that HPE have to sell off the InstantOn part of the business since they bought Juniper, and who knows where it might end up

 

[ChrisD.]

Isn't Aruba also subscription/cloud based? I should have mentioned that he doesn't want any of that, he was subscription free and local only.

 

[Caged]

Aruba Central is the subscription stuff, Instant On is like their SMB line with no fees (Meraki vs. Meraki Go). It's not a particularly impressive product lineup, and the problem with someone offering a license-free trimmed down SMB version alongside something better is there will always be a desire to give people a reason to buy into the higher end product line.

Considering you need a gateway/router/whatever, switch(es) and APs it's tough to find a reason to not go with Unifi. TP Link Omada would come close but it's nowhere near as polished, there aren't all the small 5 port switch options that Unifi do if you just need to solve a problem, and I don't think the cost saving is anything to get excited about.

 

[Caged]

Interestingly this has just been uploaded which covers your question, if you like the look of the TP Link stuff then it should be a good option

 

[b0rn2sk8]

If he likes the TP link mesh, the obvious choice is TP link omada range seems like the obvious choice.

IIRC a consumer mesh system will just use the cables as the backhaul if they are plugged in.

 

[aaronyuri]

My house is 2300sqft. I use the Deco BE25 with three APs, wired backhaul over cat6, and have lots of solid brick walls. It works perfectly. It even works in the back garden! Not so much on the front though as they are not positioned that way.

The BE25 meets WiFi 7 and has 2.5GbE ports. It's hard to go wrong with this setup, especially for a non-technical person. I've set it up and haven't needed to touch it since.

 

[On Holiday]

I've got 3x TP-Link Deco M4 serving a property that's ~3500 sqft with some seriously thick walls.

They've been set and forget since I first installed them in May 2022, they were on offer at £74 for 3 at the time.

 

[Rainmaker]

Ordinarily I'd suggest UniFi, but then I realised there may be cheaper options, and he is not overly technical - he just wants a set and forget setup. I can't see him having a requirement for multi gigabit connections.

He currently uses TP Link Deco in a mesh deployment which serves him well currently, so perhaps something from TP Link instead?

Setting aside the usual 'obvious' choices like Aruba, Mikrotik, UniFi, enterprise pull stuff (which can be surprisingly good and cheap for home/lab use)... How cheap are we talking? By 'non-technical' I'm assuming we can assume he won't notice if the backplane is 3x10G or 1x30G or whatever, and isn't hammering QSFP28 transfers to his lab at work 24/7?

The Chinese switches from GigaPlus and Vimin are worth a look if budget really means budget. Patrick at STH has positively reviewed them in 16 port guise (silent, effective, but split backplane). The GigaPlus 24 port 2.5 G base-T with 2x SFP+ uplinks and a 400W PoEat budget is almost down to £300 in the usual next day places. They're 19" rack mountable but also desktop form factor if needed. Gigabit even cheaper.

You are already au fait with the better end of the market so I shan't go further than that.

If he's still in the planning stage though, I'd definitely nudge him to run a couple of runs of OS LC/UPC between the 'central location' and the loft, while the walls are open and he has the chance. That will allow him to move to SFP+, SFP28, QSFP28 and beyond as years go by. Cabling would be literally under a tenner all in and will save him a ton of headaches, or at least keep options open, down the line. They don't even need 'plumbing in' atm, just having them coiled and available is a bonus. Just an idea.

Edited to remove a couple of multigig options, I didn't see the 'no multigig' spec. That'll teach me to leave my reading glasses in the car!