Network layout advice?

[wayner]

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:

• 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.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

[Tim - feel free to split this off into a new thread in the appropriate forum.]

What is the best place for the bulk of your network equipment?

The place it is easiest to run all of your cabling to, and if it is a large pile of equipment, someplace where adequate cooling / power is available.

Is this a good place for a WAP?

In general, no.

If not where else do you put WAPs?

Someplace where you expect they'll provide good coverage. I have one at each end of the 3rd floor, one in the middle of the 1st floor, and one in a detached garage. That seems to cover the whole house and yard sufficiently. Coverage was poor in the server room (the 1st floor location mentioned above) until I added an additional access point there.

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.

It is a smaller market. Manufacturers use that as an excuse to charge higher prices, often much higher. Also, there's a fair bit of "people expect to pay a lot, so we'll charge a lot". Look at rackmount modems in "the old days" - manufacturers charged 2 or 3 times the price of a standalone modem - you were paying for the "privilege" of not getting a manual, wall wart, and software CD. I used Microcom because they charged "only" the same price as their standalone modem.

There's also the consideration that a lot of what you're asking for is more common in small businesses than the home market - again, higher prices. I tend to buy used Cisco equipment - my home network is a Cisco 2821 router, Aironet 1250 access points, and Catalyst 4948 switches. But if you aren't familiar with Cisco's IOS, this is not recommended as there's a steep learning curve (more like a cliff, actually, particularly if you're used to GUI-based setup).