Spec me a wireless router and switches...

Associate
Joined
23 Apr 2007
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Location
Cardiff-ish, Wales
Hi guys,

I've just moved house and am getting ready to set up a new network. I'll be running Cat 5 cable from my front room, where I have a Virgin Superhub, out the wall and up to my front bedroom. From there I'll be running cable through to my office. I'll also be running from my front room through the wall to my dining room.

Front room - Virgin Superhub, HTPC, Sonos
Dining room - Sonos, spare port for laptop
Front bedroom - TV... will be upgrading so probably network connected, HTPC, Sonos
Office - 2 PCs, Server, printer, possible Sonos.

I've had frequent wireless dropouts from the Superhub and I've read that it's an issue with the hub itself, so I was looking at turning off the wireless feature and getting a seperate wireless router.

I'll also need switches in the dining room, bedroom and office to keep my options open...

I'm looking for the fasted possible speeds across the LAN as I'll be streaming uncompressed Bluray rips. The wifi will be for tablets, phones and laptops etc.

Any suggestions?

Cheers,

Jed
 
Associate
Joined
19 Sep 2014
Posts
630
Why not cable all the points back to a central point and just have one switch?


Quite often people slate the 'consumer' routers/access points but quite often it just comes down to poor configuration and lack of understanding. A lot of them are set to channel hop (auto) which can cause inconsistent results.

Folk often recommend stuff like Ubiquiti UniFi AP's but then they are configuring them properly.. which is half the story...

I've had some issues with the Virgin SH before, but not Wi-Fi related.

Just buy the cheapest gigabit switches that have enough ports.. budget brands like TP Link, Linksys, Netgear etc are all fine.


If you are intent on running the SH in modem mode and using a separate router, what is your budget and competency level? E.g. are you looking for a good quality consumer device or something more professional?
 
Last edited:
Associate
OP
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Location
Cardiff-ish, Wales
The main issue with a central point is routing the cables nicely. It would be easier and neater to have a single cable to each room and then into seperate switches. Would there be much of a performance hit? I had it set up like that in my old house... router downstairs, cable out and up the wall to a switch in my office. From that I fed one cable through to the bedroom to connect directly into a HTPC. This time I need more connections in the bedroom, hence thinking of three cables from the downstairs hub, one to a switch in the dining room, one to a switch in the bedroom, the other to a switch in the office.

Budget for seperate router... up to £100 I guess, not looking for world class, just something reliable.
 
Associate
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The performance hit is you will be limited by the speed of your links. Unless you've got multiple things going on at the same time which are likely to saturate gigabit ethernet then it's unlikely to be an issue.

Draytek make half decent pro-consumer grade routers but depending on exactly the spec you want (e.g. 802.11n or 802.11ac) the price does go up wildly. I personally use MikroTik routers (of which I am a certified consultant for) or Cisco. The former will fit in your budget but isn't as simple to configure as a consumer device. Depends how techie you are.
 
Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2008
Posts
12,096
If it's only the wireless you're having problems with consider adding a wireless access point rather than a full blow router. Have a look at the UniFi thread that's on here.

I'd agree that running multiple switches isn't going to be an issue.
 
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