Full home networking setup recommendations/help

[theramenman]

I'm moving into a new house pretty soon. Its a pretty new building and when it was constructed, they seem to have put in cat 6 cabling to every room in the house with the other end of all the cables dangling freely in the basement. The cables are long enough for me to connect to a switch or rack-mounted gear if needed. Any suggestions as to how I should go about networking my home? I'm a bit rusty when it comes to larger networks so correct me if I'm working: I was thinking of having the cable modem in the basement which will connect to a 12 port switch. Since I have an ethernet port in basically every room + some hallways, I was thinking I could place wireless acesspoints as needed throughout the house that't connect to the switch (I figure two of those new ubiquiti AC-Lite accesspoints, one in each floor, if not just one on the main floor alone, should be more than sufficient) via the wall ethernet ports. I was also thinking of placing a NAS down there with the switch so the files would be accessible from any room of the house. My living room houses our TV, a console and my desktop so I would probably be using my Asus AC68U there to connect everything in the livingroom (putting the AC68U in AP mode should allow for this without much issues, right?). Given the information, any suggestions on specific products or setups? Anything Im planning incorrectly or have not considered? Thank you guys in advance

 

[joegreat]

Since I have an ethernet port in basically every room + some hallways, I was thinking I could place wireless acesspoints as needed throughout the house that't connect to the switch (I figure two of those new ubiquiti AC-Lite accesspoints, one in each floor, if not just one on the main floor alone, should be more than sufficient) via the wall ethernet ports. I was also thinking of placing a NAS down there with the switch so the files would be accessible from any room of the house. My living room houses our TV, a console and my desktop so I would probably be using my Asus AC68U there to connect everything in the livingroom (putting the AC68U in AP mode should allow for this without much issues, right?). Given the information, any suggestions on specific products or setups? Anything Im planning incorrectly or have not considered? Thank you guys in advance

Hi,

In your case you only need switches (if multiple wired device need to be connected) plus some wi-fi access points on strategic places (to cover the max. rooms).

When it comes to wi-fi range you should go for Asus RT-N66U routers and configure them for Access Point (AP) mode only. Depending of the size and construciton of the house you can cover everything with 2 routers (or you add as needed).
And: you have already also 4 ports as a switch in the router - and just for as low as USD 99!
To maximize the range you should use John's fork firmware from here.

With kind regards
Joe

 

[System Error Message]

Wiring your house is good and you can use from Cat5e 1Gb/s to cat6a for 10Gb/s. Give every room 2 wires at least or more and place your APs where most of your wifi traffic will be.

AC APs are worth it. You can use a wifi router with normal mode as an AP but you would have to disable DHCP server on it. As for your router and switch choice it depends on your speeds and what features you want and how much skill you have.

 

[AdvHomeServer]

You just wrote in to brag, didn't you.

Assuming you're serious, yes, the cable modem in the basement next to the router. Down the road, it's a great place for a VM server, too. I have my NAS in the basement next to the router. Good place. Velcro tape works wonders with neatness.

After that, let your imagination wander. Wired where you can. Wireless access points where you need them. Try out new stuff as your ideas develop. Most 'standards' develop because nobody has resources as nice as yours. Standards that consider security are good to look into. Standards that say 'you should do this because we do' are just limitations. Mostly, ignore them.

TP-Link has a mostly smart switch that's really cheap and has good reviews. You never know when a VLAN will come in handy and the cost is close to other mfgrs dumb switches. Look into it.

You have the capacity to run a nice network, not a wireless make-do. Figure whatever you do, you will switch up later and not be able to imagine what that will involve today.

re Ubiquiti: I had a bad experience with their 'legendary' er-lite. Their other equipment may be better. A coordinated set of access points is a good idea. Ubiquiti may be great ... just look into it first.

 

[coxhaus]

If the wire hanging down is the wire from the walls I would be carful not to bend it much as it can break due to it being solid core wire and will not bend like stranded patch panel wires. I would terminate the wire in a patch panel. Then add patch panel wires to the equipment.

 

[AdvHomeServer]

If the wire hanging down is the wire from the walls I would be carful not to bend it much as it can break due to it being solid core wire and will not bend like stranded patch panel wires. I would terminate the wire in a patch panel. Then add patch panel wires to the equipment.

Depending on the number of wires and the location, terminating in keystone connectors may provide a better looking finish. If it's in a closet, then whatever is easier. If it's out in the open and you have not too many wires, keystone connectors, with well labeled wires, and velcro tape can look tidy and give you a nice central point. Patch panels can look kind of bulky and the snake pit aspect is hard to cover up.

 

[coxhaus]

Hopefully your CAT cables are in a closet or in a cut out wall where you can fit a patch panel. Most cable contractors plan for this. I would not want to have a patch panel sticking out on a wall in the open.

 

[theramenman]

Its in a small walk in closet sized room. Id say its just big enough to fit like a switch rack and a nas or something of that sort. Thanks to everyone who replied! So far, from testing with my Asus AC68U connected directly with the modem, I don't have good enough coverage of the 2nd floor so Im gonna get an AP to add coverage (any suggestions?). As for the switch, would I need a manged switch or would a simple unmanaged switch do?

 

[sfx2000]

Make sure that you've got labels and a roadmap/diagram - might be a couple of years, but trying to chase down things after the fact... have a soft copy, and I would print one out and laminate it next to the patch panel...

 

[KenZ71]

I know I am spouting blasphemy a few months ago I picked up a wndr3700 from fleabay for $20 to act as an AP, quite happy with it.

I'll second label the wires when you can, but it don't matter currently.

Yes, an unmanaged 8 port gigabit switch or 2 will be all you need . If those basement wires already have RJ45s you can go straight to a switch, I haven't touched my switch in years no worries about breakage. If the wires are not termed punch downs to a patch panel or even keystone wall plugs would be easier than crimping RJ45s

http://www.cmple.com/search.aspx?SearchTerm=Keystone+

Enjoy the new house and network goodies!

 

[theramenman]

Should have probably stated that the cables are already terminated in RJ45's in the basement and wall plugs in the rest of the house. As for the WNDR3700, I have seen them go on evilbay in really good conditions for $15 to $20 and for the basement where we might have little to no people ever actually going in or using the internet, I might use that as a AP down there. As for the rest of the house, might just go for the Ubiquiti because we will have quite a few people and devices and that's not including any guests that might be over. It'd be nice to have an access point that wont choke from the sheer number of users (especially if I have the NAS connected to the switch in the basement and multiple people streaming). I have a freenas box capable of putting out about 500 mb/s speeds, I know I'm not gonna get that over the network, but I do have a dual gigabit nic in there. Would it be wise to get a managed switch to get some extra read/write speeds over the network from multiple users by doing some link aggregation or is that a can of worms I should stay away from?

 

[KenZ71]

You just might be pleasantly surprised.

Iperf shows darn near gigabit between my NAS4Free and linux desktop both are almost 10 year old boxes. Not bad with a pos used router

My network is the typical home setup an xbox, a few phones streaming Netflix, Facebook or youtube while NAS4Free is pushing video to my Amazon Fire Stick. No complaints

My stuff:
Nas4Free 10.1.0.2.1702 - ZFS RaidZ2 | SuperMicro X7SBE - Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3000Mhz - 8GB ECC Ram - 3 x 2TB WD Green

1 wnd3700 as a router, another for an AP & a GS108 dumb unmanaged switch.

 

[System Error Message]

One thing to take note is that PCI 32 bit bus is 133MB/s so it will not saturate a full duplex gigabit link. Old computers have the NIC on the PCI bus.

 

[AdvHomeServer]

You just might be pleasantly surprised.

Iperf shows darn near gigabit between my NAS4Free and linux desktop both are almost 10 year old boxes. Not bad with a pos used router

My network is the typical home setup an xbox, a few phones streaming Netflix, Facebook or youtube while NAS4Free is pushing video to my Amazon Fire Stick. No complaints

My stuff:
Nas4Free 10.1.0.2.1702 - ZFS RaidZ2 | SuperMicro X7SBE - Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3000Mhz - 8GB ECC Ram - 3 x 2TB WD Green

1 wnd3700 as a router, another for an AP & a GS108 dumb unmanaged switch.

I was thinking of adding a home brew NAS to my soon to be built home server, but discovered ZFS requires you to use at least 8GB ram for it to be a good idea, and all NAS software providers ask you to use ZFS. My whole small server can only support 8GB (their recommendation is to get better hardware). Seems like a waste of time if QNAP and the others offer the same with less ... you just have to buy a ready to use box they sell. Maybe next iteration if I need a new NAS and the requirements hasn't changed to 32GB.

Yes, NAS4Free says any amount of ram will work, but in the fine print recommends a minimum of 4GB or better.

How can the NAS box mfgrs do great work with so little RAM?

 

[System Error Message]

I was thinking of adding a home brew NAS to my soon to be built home server, but discovered ZFS requires you to use at least 8GB ram for it to be a good idea, and all NAS software providers ask you to use ZFS. My whole small server can only support 8GB (their recommendation is to get better hardware). Seems like a waste of time if QNAP and the others offer the same with less ... you just have to buy a ready to use box they sell. Maybe next iteration if I need a new NAS and the requirements hasn't changed to 32GB.

Yes, NAS4Free says any amount of ram will work, but in the fine print recommends a minimum of 4GB or better.

How can the NAS box mfgrs do great work with so little RAM?

It just doesnt cache in RAM. Operating systems after windows XP will cache program and files in RAM same with recent linux distributions. If you look at the minimum requirement for windows xp it is 128MB of ram and for windows vista it is 1GB of ram (the requirements at the back of the cd case is a lie). Processing requirements didnt increase much compared to ram. The NAS works great with little RAM because the OS and software need little but it wont have space to cache many files in RAM, it would be similar to if you used windows xp as a NAS.

ZFS is more of a mess but great for multi user environments but not for single user environment and it uses as much ram as it can for cache so you dont need expensive RAID cards with onboard RAM/flash just for performance.

 

[KenZ71]

My current NAS4Free box has 8GB memory and does just fine streaming video while serving up spreadsheets.

For that matter my previous system had 4GB memory and still did fine. Only reason I upgraded was to get ECC memory support.

I would say take an old PC and put NAS4Free on it and give it a try, nothing to lose.