Hi Everyone!
Been playing around with the idea of upgrading my network for a while now and finally around Christmas I got to the point where WIFI and my home network came to a crawl 
Flip-flopped between Mikrotik and Ubiquity gear for a while now and both have their strengths and weaknesses, and while this is a single family home - trying to keep it budget friendly(ish) and by no means iām in a hurry to buy everything at once sorta deal but at the same time I have been known to go over the topā¦
As a gateway i have been looking at the Ubiquity UDM Pro ā Ubiquity XG16 as a backbone and use Mikrotik CSS610-8G-2S+IN as endpoint switches, however i was quite satisfied with the price of the xg16 at nearly $800CAD, but do know ebay can be a gold mine for retired enterprise switches that are far more capable.
SOā¦
The hunt began!
Last week i have found a listing for a EDGE-CORE 7512-32X 100GBE switch for $200 but after some research i have came across that they were known for an issue with the AVR54 Bug - spoke with the seller and was assure this unit had the fix. So i sat back and let the auction end and ended up scooping this switch up for $200USD ( was around $395ish with shipping to my door )
All this equipment needs to go somewhere so I have ordered a Techly 12U rack off Amazon and sourced an APC SmartUPS 1500 RM2U locally with dead batteries via Kijiji for $80 and after a quick trip to Canadian Tire they even had the right VRLA batteries on the shelf for a measly $26 each installed them and unit fired up and is running perfect, but wanted a way to keep track on things so i hopped onto ebay again, found an APC Network Management Card 2 for $30 and a Dry Contact I/O card as well as a Temperature/Humidity Sensor to go with it. This way If it gets too warm in the rack i can place the temp sensor near the top of the rack and use it to trigger the I/O module to turn on the 2 Noctua fans at the top of the rack based on temperature inside if needed.
Plan still stands to use an UDM -Pro as my gateway/router as i would like to use the ubiquity APās as well as a few of their cameras around the property and would make life easier to have all the controls in 1 spotā¦ wife even requested their video door bell and a few cameras around the house to keep an eye on the minionsā¦
My gaming computer, my daughter computer and my sons computer already have Dell XYT17 ( Intel X520āDA2 ) network cards while the family NAS is sporting a HP Infiniband 544+ QSFP card and its running unraid. Both kids bedrooms and the master have several devices that can be pulled off Wifi and be place onto a switch instead of congesting the wireless network and this is where the Mikrotik CSS610 comes in. My computer is in the living room so a drop is need there too!
So that makes 3x 15M MTP/MPO fan out cables ( kids will share 1 as they share a wall and makes life easy to just run the in cable and offset the mudrings in the common wall and they get 2 dedicated 10GB links to the backbone switch. The Master Bedroom and Living Room will have dedicated runs while a single 15M Type A MTP/MPO cable for the NAS which will be moved a few feet away from the network rack and reside there with its own dedicated battery backup. While 15M is long it gives me flexibility if i ever want to move the NAS elsewhere in the house i have the option to do so. Also all cables are Multimode OM3 and my runs are under 100M it can still support 100GBPS with ease.
Before the question is asked Iām on Shaw Fiber+ 1Gigabit down 100Mbit up, both kids game and stream as well as family members stream using plex from our NAS while kids sometime use the NAS to transcode/encode videos as well as well as good ol dad here plays online often and hates lag.
I do have to say I do hate that pfsense does not have a āfamilyā version where an app on your phone can cut internet connection to certain VLANS in case minions are acting up.
Feel free to add any suggestions or ideas!
Links to items will be in post below