Can someone give me opinions on my suggested home network

[Tom Brough]

Hello everyone, sorry for the noob questions, just wondered if you can cast your eyes over my suggested layout and tell me of any pitfalls you see.

I plan running,

Modem - router - switch- wireless AP

With my livingroom tv box, PS4 and Nas via Ethernet into the switch.

All the mobile phones, laptops, dishwasher, kids tvs, kids consoles etc will be via the wireless AP.

My concern mainly comes from, running everything from the switch, as from reading the manual for the switch, it says to connect the PS4 and select it's priority as high, connect the tv steaming box and set to medium... Both of which I understand... But with regard to the wireless AP because it's got things like tvs and consoles on, really it needs to be medium priority as well, but if I set that then everything's on highish priority which defeats the entire point of the QOS in the first place, would it be best left off?

I can run QOS on the router, which would let me set rules for individual IP addresses, so that would let me set different prioritys for devices all running via the wireless AP, but if I'm going to that trouble, is the switch really offering any benefit of being there?

 

[coxhaus]

Yes run QOS on the router that is where the bottle neck will be but first why not try it before you add QOS? I would to see if you have an issue before you change settings. How fast is your internet?

 

[Trip]

Tom, if you're primarily looking to ensure per-host fairness out to the internet (as is the case for most SOHO users), you'll do so with much greater effect from applying QoS on the WAN interface (internet port) of your router/gateway than you will by focusing exclusively on switch-based QoS (802.1p and/or DSCP). The latter does help, but tends to pale in comparison to doing QoS on the router, usually by a factor of how much slower your WAN is than your LAN (1Gb/s duplex).

As @coxhaus asked, what is your internet speed, in Mb/s, up and down?

 

[Tom Brough]

I'm on vdsl 80/20 service...

So really the switch isn't gonna do anything for me as I'm not lacking Ethernet ports, other than the fact my router can't do link aggregation but my NAS can... If the routers still doing all the QOS and DHCP etc, the switch is basically an added complication with very little benefit?

 

[Trip]

Thanks for the additional info, Tom.

With enough switch ports on the router, provided you can home-run all endpoint cables to the router's location, then correct, the switch would likely be unnecessary. However, if the devices are far enough away and it's simply easier to run a single cable over that distance, then using the switch may useful -- provided, of course, the single 1Gb uplink from the switch to the router wouldn't be a bottleneck on any transfers to/from a device plugged into the router's switch.

Regarding link aggregation to the NAS, unless you could actually utilize the additional bandwidth from the second (or more) link(s), you'd see little to no benefit. You would have port redundancy, but rarely do NICs ever fail these days, so again, no real benefit day-to-day.

Back to QoS, the real focal point is that 80/20 VDSL line. Presuming you have no cable/fiber and/or higher-speed ISP alternatives, you'll probably want a router capable of running SQM-based QoS to prevent bufferbloat, which is likely to be the main culprit effecting your endpoint QoS, at least much more so than having the right (or any) QoS in place on your switch(es).

The good news is there are a myriad of router options that can run SQM at 100Mb/s aggregate, from turn-key consumer products like Eero, to the cheap Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X, to OpenWRT on a Qualcomm-based all-in-one, or most any open-source firewall distro. One of those is what you should focus on getting in place, to truly ensure your QoS is adequate (presuming you can't change ISP type and/or speed significantly).

 

[Greg72]

The Router does not even see the switch unless it is a Smart type switch. Most routers are smart enough to prioritize packets by types these days. Your PS4 would just need to send small packets during a game to update information on the servers. The TV would have larger packets if streaming say movies from the Internet or from the NAS.

I have a 8 port switch where our Smart TV sits. I have one empty port at this point. Always make sure that you do not need to replace a switch with one for more ports, also do not get a switch with more ports than you will ever need.