hey all,
Ive created a Network map showing how my network is laid out at home. Its a bit of a mess of cables and boxes that ive slowly added over time.
Games room has the fibre optic 350mbps into the house. cable modem set to router mode and has wifi enabled.
The upstairs has an 8 port & 5 port switch and Asus dsl router (wifi on) all next to each other. 3 x Wifi mesh modules in various rooms upstairs first module connected to the 8 port router.
Just wondering if there was any improvement i can make, perhaps replacuing the 8 and 5 port switches with a single larger switch also thinking perhaps ahead to faster network speeds in the future. I`m considering updating the Qnap Nas to something that has 2.5gbps or 10gbps for options of using nas storage for editing photos/videos over the network.
Thanks alot
Heres a list of whats connected
OFFICE upstairs
Asus DSL-AC68U router (wifi + 4 ports)
TP-LINK TL-SG108E 8-Port switch (1000mbps)
TP-LINK TL-SF1005D 5-Port switch (100mbps)
BT Wholehome 5ghz wifi mesh X 3
2 Desktop computers
1 Laptop
1 QNAP NAS TS-251 (2 ports LAG connected to 8 port)
3 x tplink 4 port.
LOUNGE downstairs
NETGEAR GS105E-200 (1000mbps)
TV and Humax recorder.
TP-LInk TL-SG105 switch (1000mbps)
LG 4K TV
Playstation 4 pro
TV Media recorder/streamer
Yamaha Music Cast streamer
Echo Dot
WIFI Connected around house
Nest doorbell
4 x Tablets
2 x Phones
2 x Laptops
4 X tp link smart plugs
2 X tp link smart bulbs
2 x Merros 4 port smart extension sockets
2 X Alexa dots
1 X Blink and 3 wireless cameras
4 X Wyze cameras
2 X Neocam cameras
2 X flood detectors
1 X House alarm
1 X Lightwave light hub and 6 light switches.
only possible improvements i can see is:
workstation 1 taken off of wifi modem and connected to the tp 5 port.
port 3 on dsl modem connected to port 1 on tp 5 port.
remove the link port 1 on 8 prot tp to port 4 on tp5.
port 4 on dsl to port 1 on tp8, lightwave to port 2 on tp 5 port.
bt wifi mesh to port 3 on tp 5 portyou can then connect port 2 of tp8 port to any of the remaining ports on the tp 5 as a redundant data path.
from your current set up you have daisy chained the tp8 and the tp5 from 1 port of the wifi modem and linked workstation 1 directly to the wifi modem.
this is leaving ports 1,3 +4 on the wireless overloaded and their performance will suffer a little bit.
look at it in steps of duty cycle
cable modem and dsl modems are to be looked at as supply lines.
switching network devices as control gates to divert resources where needed most.
so your supply needs to be routed where the switches are going to be more efficient.
basically 1 supply line to each switch, and then from the switches to the devices.
A lot depends on the physical arrangement of the rooms. And how much money you want to invest in.
Attach everything that is physically possible to the cable. Think about 10G if not everywhere as points in the core of the network. Add pfsense on the front. Create vlan separations. Create a clear network core and tree-type segmentation.
But this is a complete reconstruction of the network and not improvement.
Thanks for that. Should note the tplink 5 port is not a gigabit switch, its upto 100mbps. Do you think I should look at getting a new switch that would just consolidate both into one 1gbps ?
If the 5port is just sitting on top of your 1gbps switch, you can plug the cable in directly to your 8port switch and save a wall socket.
But don’t throw it away, 100mbps is still plenty for a lot of iot use cases. Hell, most people have never used wifi faster than that, so it’s plenty for a lot of use cases beyond just iot.
Typical bluray bandwidth, if you were to stream it over the network is typically also under 100Mbps.
Thanks all. Just to check, i noticed down stairs with my cable modem there are two spare ports. do you think its worth taking one of those directly upstairs to the 8 port switch? and then the other port to the 5 port next to the cable modem?
At the moment, it just goes out of the cable modem, to the 5 port switch, and then upstairs to the 8 port switch.
