Home Networking

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Home networking setup question (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi all,

currently I'm living in 2 floor house 80m2 each floor and I get away with fairly okay connection with one Netgear Nighthawk R7000 positioned in the middle of the house on floor level. Usually the connectivity varies between 30~400Mbit and there is one or two blind spots in upper floor of the house.

Currently the wiring through the house is done as following:

-- optic fibre --> ISP/modem/router/all-in-one (AIO) with disabled wifi --> and then further each wire is dragged to its own room.

In living room I have set up my own router for better wi-fi speeds mainly because:

The space where ISP modem / AIO device is located (and all wiring coming into the house and dragged to other rooms) is inside a wall with very limited by space - imagine box 20cm x 30cm x 7cm (width x height x depth)
ISP Wi-Fi on the AIO device is poop even if the position would be better
The Wi-Fi reception will be better than inside a wall behind a steel door
I brought my old Netgear router from previous apartment and it worked as a temporary solution in the new house. The Netgear router software is much more responsive, feature-packed (I can also load openwrt to it) than proprietary things on ISP AIO device. Not a heavy router user, but I might need some basic functionalities working like QoS (multiplayer gaming), Port forwarding, VLAN, DNS setup etc.

There are a few drawbacks however:

The Netgear router wifi will only recognise the devices that are hooked up to it, meaning all wired devices in other rooms will not be picked up in same LAN.
I plan to buy a NAS and hook it into a wired connection in one of the other rooms where the wire is coming from ISP AIO, it will not be picked up by any wi-fi device connected to my netgear router.
In upper floor I have worse reception, because I'm lacking additional AP.

From the device standpoint I have following connected over wire:

2 Laptops (to ISP router)
1 Playstation (to my router)
1 TV (to my router)

and the rest over wifi:

Cellphones / iPads
Smaller lighter IOT (lights, switches etc.)

What I'm thinking to do is to:

Squeeze one small wired only 1gb router with 4-5 ethernet endpoints right after ISP/modem AIO device into that small space and hook all wires leading to other rooms to it.
Tell ISP to disable all router functionality on their device, so it acts as a modem.
Use wired AP or wired Mesh systems (2 or 3) in other rooms so that everything is in one big LAN and that moving devices between those points is seamless

The problem I'm having is figuring out which wired router to pick (I will prepare a separate power outlet for it) and which Access Points or Mesh system to go for that will play nicely. Wired router must be small so I was thinking about UISP EdgeRouter X or something from mikrotik, but I worry they won't play nicely with other mesh AP or may be too complex to setup. Also from EdgeRouter I saw some reviews that the speeds are bad if you add any additional functionality to it (you need to disable some flags / functionality to be able to get 1gbit speeds or something).

Ideally I'd love to get whole 1gbit (or whatever the cable allows) from my ethernet connection and at least 500mbit over Wi-Fi. Some of the devices I already own have ability to use Wi-Fi 6E. Money-wise I'm looking for something under 500$ which I hope would get me some good value->price performance.

I'm not a full network expert, and the existing cable laid around the house is 1gbit and should suffice for now.

Any help with suggestions is appreciated (either which HW to look at or the setup). Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The Netgear router wifi will only recognise the devices that are hooked up to it, meaning all wired devices in other rooms will not be picked up in same LAN.

You can fix this by putting the Netgear into Access Point Mode, and letting the ISP AIO act as the only router. You can even turn the AIO router's WiFi back on, even if it's poop, and everything connected to either the AIO or the Netgear will be on the same network, wired or wireless.

But something tells me you'd rather buy new stuff anyway, because it's more exciting.

Because of the small form factor, the EdgeRouter X is a practical choice. It can do 1 Gig total, meaning 1 Gig download, or 1 Gig upload, but not 1 Gig in both directions simultaneously. If you wanted to try maxxing it out in both directions, it'd do 500 Mbps each way simultaneously - thus 1 Gig Total. It's rare that you need 1 Gig in both directions simultaneously though. It's usually one way or the other, so the ERX is pretty good in real world usage. I have one for my 1000/1000 Google fiber line, and I extremely rarely get bottlenecked by the ERX. I don't BitTorrent though.

You need to enable Hardware NAT to hit 1 Gig on the ERX, which takes two seconds, just Google how to do it.

You will drop down a lot of throughput if you enable QoS or any kind of IDS / IPS. QoS should be unnecessary with a 1 Gig symmetrical line. Just manage your clients usage so nothing saturates the line. IDS / IPS is a waste of time and resources on a Home Network, IMHO. There is just a total and complete lack of history that shows home networks are being targeted for hacking.

So your plan to put the AIO into modem only mode, and then connect it to the ERX is good so far.

Then, My List would be:

EdgeRouter X, $60

Ubiquiti Switch 8 Lite PoE, $110

2x U6 Pro, $160 each, $320

That's $490, under budget.

If you need 3 APs, exchange the 2x U6 Pros with 3x U6 Lites, $300. Total would be $470 with Lites, but 5 GHz WiFimight be under 500 Mbps, though it would be close, depending on the client and positioning.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Thanks for helping out. Just to double check I could power both the Lite 8 PoE switch and EdgeRouter X through with switch PoE by using one power socket?

I can't stress enough how little space I have in the wall as it's already half filled with cables, existing ISP modem/router and one power outlet (that i need to split into two, one for ISP modem and one for own router), so I worry if there will be enough space for both the switch and edgeRouter in there. Is Lite 8 PoE necessary to enable U6 Pro AP? Can't they be directly connected to EdgeRouter? Is the transition between APs seamless, for example will it break when moving around the house, up and down the floor?