2.5g home network design query

[squidgy]

Hello,

I want to upgrade to a 2.5g wifi 6e network. I’ve currently got an old asus router running merlin and two switches.

Current setup is

Router > switch > switch > poe injector > ubiquiti ap.

This works great all cat6.

I want to replace the switches for 2.5g ones, then i’ll replace the ubi with the enterprise 6e one but there are no routers with 2.5g lan ports that I can find, so my question is, can I get 2.5g speeds for enabled devices on the network when everything is essentially running through the 1gb ports on the router? I cant really re-cable anything so the switches will have to stay “in sequence”

 

[Tech Junky]

Well, everything on the lan will be faster. Unless you upgrade your ISP plan I wouldn't worry about the router.

2.5 switches are cheap at $100-150/ea

I use a nwa210ax for an AP and get great speed from it hitting a max of 1.4gbps using an ax411 card and 160mhz.

6e just adds 6ghz and nothing more but, 7 will double the speed with 320mhz bandwidth. Might be worth waiting for unless you need 6ghz because of your neighbors and congestion.

 

[MDM]

but there are no routers with 2.5g lan ports that I can find

What are you talking about?
Most recent (ASUS and other brand names) routers have 2.5 or 10 g ports and even more than 2 (WAN + LAN)...

 

[tgl]

Well, everything on the lan will be faster. Unless you upgrade your ISP plan I wouldn't worry about the router.

Yeah, that. Until your internet connection is better-than-1Gb, there's not a lot of point in upgrading the router. The point of a switch upgrade such as you're describing is mainly to make connections inside your LAN faster. (However, if you're using multiple 1Gb LAN ports on your router, you might want to move all those connections to your higher-speed switch, so that the router isn't bottlenecking local connections.)

BTW, it's worth thinking about exactly what it is you need to make faster. I've had good results using several Netgear GS110MX switches, which have 2 up-to-10G ports and 8 1G ports. By daisy-chaining their 10G ports, I have a bunch of 1G ports in multiple locations and a 10G trunk connection between them, which is pretty nice for my use-case. (I have a lot of 1G clients and just a couple machines capable of more, which I was able to stick at the ends of the daisy chain.) If you actually have several machines with 2.5G ports, then that solution won't do what you want --- but in a scenario like that, a 2.5G trunk connection between the switches seems likely to be a bottleneck. So I'm still not convinced that all-2.5G-port switches are what you want here.