Home network overhaul - thoughts/recommendations

Networking Networking Hardware
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Apologies up front for the long post.

So it's been a long time coming, I've been planning my network overhaul for a while.
My current home network isn't anything fancy.
Internet connection is 100/20 cable.
A Cisco EPC3928AD bridged to a Dovado 4GR WiFi router.
And that's pretty much it.

Traffic on the network isn't anything massive but a NAS would be a thing in the future and/or a home server with virtualized desktops to thin clients.

But for now just two wired desktop computers and a wireless laptop.
Daily we have two phones on the WLAN along with a Chromecast, of course the occasional friends visiting so they'll be on there as well.
So quite light on devices for now.

What do I want?
Router, switch and AP.

QoS on the router
AP should be a dual band 802.11ac PoE
Managed/smart managed PoE switch with LAG support. IPv6?

Gear

Router:
Edgerouter X. I have made up my mind on this.
I will setup QoS for at least the 20M uplink, 100M downlink QoS is probably too much for the ERX to handle from what I've been reading.
Maybe somethingsomething with the firewall.
Haven't decided all that I want to do on it but I'll learn as I go and do what it can handle.

Access point:
Ubiquiti Unifi AC Pro.
Nuff said.

Switch:
This I have no idea what would be a good deal. I need help with this one.

LAG support and PoE are the main features I would want to have.
PoE for the AP and possible future IP cameras. LAG for future NAS and/or home server.
QoS is probably a nice thing to do on the switch as well, for example higher priority to wireless AP port if I'm doing heavy transfers or something like that on the LAN between computers?

Amount of Gbit ports?
8 is about right for now. 5 is just nope and 16 port models (with PoE) are out of my comfort zone.
Realistically I only need a single PoE port for the AP but couple extra for future IP camera's would be nice.
Of course PoE injectors are a thing but I would like to keep it simple, so PoE please.

IPv6? Do I want IPv6 support in a switch? Why would I want it?
I would like this overhaul to be a long lived one and I feel that it would be smart of me to prepare for the future that is IPv6.
But do I need it?
As far as I know my modem, the Cisco EPC3928AD, supports IPv6 (iirc!) so if and when my ISP starts offering IPv6, does my internal home network need to be IPv6 as well?
ERX supports it, the Unifi AC Pro supports it afaik, most of my devices probably do with the exception of Android of course with the DHCPv6 debacle.
I probably have to go and read about dual stack and tunneling, don't I?

But If I tick the IPv6 filter in my price comparison website (Geizhals.eu), the "starting from" price jumps 50-60% or so...
Not completely sure if I want to shell that much more money towards the switch..

Example switches I've been looking at
TP-Link TL-SG108PE (~83€)
ZyXEL GS1900-8HP (~140€)

If you made it this far, sorry and thank you. Any thoughts and/or recommendations etc. are greatly appreciated.

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Switches don't deal with IP addresses (unless they're layer 3 but that's not what you're after) so any switch will work on an ipv6 network. Personally I use a couple of TP-Link jetstream managed switches which are pretty awesome for the price. The only other managed switches I have experience with was an older HP switch but I prefer the TP-Link, so that's my recommendation.

1 Like
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If you are just thinking of the two switches then go with TP-Link.

However you can also think about whether you want a managed or unmanaged switch, and if you need all 8 ports PoE. But really the two switches you provided aren't a bad deal. And yes, any L2 switch will will handle v4/v6 because that be L3 traffic.

But if you want ability to configure LAG at the switch you'll need a managed switch as you'll have to configure that. Which can be fun if you want to learn that stuff.

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Used Cisco 3750g aren't to expensive that's my Poe switch

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Are you okay with buying used hardware? Because if so you can grab gbps switches on eBay for literally nothing. I got two 3com managed 24port gbps switches for $60 shipped to my door.

Just for example:


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@Dexter_Kane thanks for the reply. Yeah, L2 doesn't deal with IP's while L3 does but that's the thing, for some reason I have a hard time wrapping my head around whether I'd need the L3 and/or IPv6 capabilities in a switch.
Though I have a feeling that if I don't know if I need L3 and/or IPv6 capabilities in a switch > I probably don't need them.
But under what circumstances would that be a thing where I would?
Inter-VLAN routing? I don't even have plans for any VLAN's right now but idk, maybe I could

@rockfreak101 Just examples, I'm considering the TP-Link as it's rather cheap but the Windows only management UI doodad doesn't tickle my fancy.
Yes, I touched up on all those things in the OP.
Yes, I do want a managed/smart managed switch as I would like to have support for LAG at the very least.
Some sort of port based QoS would be nice: In my head I'm imagining a situation where I would have a server
No, I don't need all 8 ports to be PoE, just one for the PoE AP. More than one doesn't hurt, who knows if I'll have IP cameras in the future and if I do get IP cameras in the future they sure as hell will be PoE.

Oh yeah, I do want to learn about this stuff so managed/smart managed switch all the way.

@mutation666 that's just overkill for my needs. I've played around a little bit with 2950's and IOS before but I don't want anything like that for my personal home network. But thanks for the suggestion :)

@Superfish1000 well I don't have a problem with it, if the price is right and it has the features I need then sure. But for now I've mainly been looking at new (ish) models as newer switches tend to be a bit more power efficient and since a switch is powered on 24/7/365 and I'm concious about it...
And no to those examples you linked, I'm not going to buy a switch with a fan, like a few sentences up I've played with 2950's and the fans are insane on those not even talking about the configuration work. This is for home use. And those even don't have PoE and the other one you linked is a fibre optic switch.

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Yeah a layer 3 switch is sort of a hybrid router switch, you'd only need it if you had a bunch of networks or VLANs that you needed to route traffic between and needed the performance of a switch and no firewall between them.

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I'm running a dual Opteron 6276 server and my switch and it's only pulling 260W.

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And? So? If that's idle then that's horrendous. I pay for my electricity.

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It should be a Webui that will work on anything

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Yeah, I forgot to remove that from the post. Some earlier hardware revision of the SG108 TP-Link's only had the Windows management, no Web UI. Newer V2 does have the Web UI.

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With PoE the AP will come with a PoE injector, so you won't need it on the switch. But if you're going to have a bunch of stuff and don't want the clutter of a bunch on injectors then it's worth getting a PoE switch.

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Like I've already said, I want PoE, I know the AP will come with an injector and quite literally just one line below that I said that I'd like to keep it simple which means no PoE injectors :P

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Oh right, missed that part