Like pretty much anyone on this forum I am not an average user but I think that the way that home networking works needs to be rethought out, at least for people who live in the average North American house that is about 2400 square feet.
I have most of my house wired up with CAT-6. It terminates in my basement near where my electrical box resides. At this spot I have my cable modem, router and network switches. IMHO it makes sense to terminate everything in such a place, but a basement is a TERRIBLE place for maximizing the range of a WAP.
Therefore I have placed other routers which are configured to work as WAPs in other parts of my house and these are connected to my Gigabit switch. Most people, especially if they are primarily wifi, won't need a separate switch. But I am guessing that most people need more that one WAP to provide complete wifi coverage of their house. To connect these WAPs back to your router it makes sense to have a Gigabit switch built into the router.
The main things to be thought out are:
I have most of my house wired up with CAT-6. It terminates in my basement near where my electrical box resides. At this spot I have my cable modem, router and network switches. IMHO it makes sense to terminate everything in such a place, but a basement is a TERRIBLE place for maximizing the range of a WAP.
Therefore I have placed other routers which are configured to work as WAPs in other parts of my house and these are connected to my Gigabit switch. Most people, especially if they are primarily wifi, won't need a separate switch. But I am guessing that most people need more that one WAP to provide complete wifi coverage of their house. To connect these WAPs back to your router it makes sense to have a Gigabit switch built into the router.
The main things to be thought out are:
- What is the best place for the bulk of your network equipment?
- Is this a good place for a WAP?
- If not where else do you put WAPs?
- Why don't you see more reasonably priced WAPs that can be placed inconspicously in your house?
- Why don't you see more routers sold without wifi capability? Or a non-wifi router sold in a kit with a couple of WAPs to put around your house.