Scenario 2 is more accurate for BOTH cases, but not because you used a switch. Scenario 1 is false.

It's the ISP provided speed that is the limited resource. You have 100 Mbps of Internet service, which can be consumed by any single connection. If multiple connections want to use Internet, that speed gets split up between all the devices trying to use it simultaneously.

It does not have to be in equal pieces. If one connection only wants 20 Mbps of Internet, another connection can use the other 80 Mbps remaining.

Using a switch does not affect the consumption of Internet from devices unless the switch port speed itself is lower than your maximum ISP speed. This isn't true in your example.

Yo man,

This is your third post about you friggin Amazon gift card. Enough already. Respect the sub.

Replacing or buying your own router is not going to help you game. You need a different method to connect, because if you could wire in with Ethernet, you would have already done so, and probably not be complaining.

People telling you to buy an Ethernet cable are on the right path, but if you really live in a house with 8 people, you won't get away with laying that cable across the floors.

Try Powerline Adapters. It uses your power outlets to form a wired connection to your current router. They have a bad reputation, but sometimes the work surprisingly well. Just keep in mind that gaming doesn't need a lot of speed, just good latency. Powerline can often give you much better latency than crowded WiFi with 8 people on it.

And guess what? They are $49.99:

https://www.amazon.com/Powerline-Ethernet-Adapter-Extender-TP-Link/dp/B084CZMYNM/

Just return them if they aren't good for your room.

Use free shipping from Amazon.

Yes, it's worth moving from cable to fiber. I'd pay a premium to do so, but it's often cheaper.

You didn't specify your fiber provider, but in most cases, they will provide you with an ONT during installation, which is something that converts a fiber connection into an Ethernet connection. They also usually provide some sort of gateway or router too, but that can either be optional or required from them, depending on the ISP. You just need to connect this ONT directly to your existing router, or put their required gateway into "Bridge Mode" or "Passthrough Mode" first and connect that to your existing router.

Either way you usually get a choice to where they put the ONT / gateway. In your case, you can have them install this right where your modem (and router) is at today, right next to each other. As long as that area is accessible, they can probably use the same hole as your coax coming from the outside into your basement.

It's very likely the install will mean no changes for your network at all, other than retiring the coax and modem, and now using their ONT. If they require use of their gateway, then just put it into Bridge Mode as already stated. Just think of the ONT as your new modem for fiber.

Just be present during install, and show them where you have things right now, and the installer will work with you to put it in a good spot.

You'd do better by finding out more information about your Mexico ISP and what are their requirements than asking here. Find out if you're required to use their gateway, how that gateway is connected, and whether or not the gateway can be put into "Bridge Mode" or "Passthrough Mode" to support your own router.

Most likely your Cisco is all you need if the gateway can be put into Bridge Mode, OR you have fiber service with an ONT and no requirements to use their gateway (just return it to them). But checking with the ISP is easier than us guessing what is needed from them.

Keep the switch and add a dedicated Access Point in your office to give you a new strong source of WiFi in that area. The Access Point I recommend for such scenarios s the Ubiquiti U6 Lite or Pro.

You can also use any off-the-shelf, all-in-one router like an ASUS or Netgear to do the same thing. Just put this router into "Access Point Mode" according to its manual. You can either just attach it to your current switch, or use the router's 4 built in LAN ports as a switch and then use your existing switch elsewhere.

Hey bud,

If your PS is going to be wired in, you can get away with just about anything for hardware.

First, find out what ISP you'll be subscribing to. You never mentioned if you're getting Fiber or Cable Internet, so find out. Next see what hardware they provide with your Internet plan, and, importantly, see if they let you use it for free, or if there is an additional monthly charge to use their hardware. If there is a monthly fee, prepare to spend some money to buy your own hardware. It's worth buying your own, as it saves you a lot of money in less than a year.

If they don't charge, or let you use it free for the first year or more, then try using what they give you while it's free. As long as your PS is wired in, anything they give you will be fine. If WiFi is too weak, then reevaluate and prepare to spend some money to fix it.

One of the benefits of living alone is that you completely control Internet usage. With that in mind you can get the lowest cost ISP speed and easily game on it if it's not DSL. You could get away with a Internet package as low as 25 Mbps Download and 5 Mbps Upload and be fine as one person living alone. Most ISPs don't even go that low. Starter packages usually start at 100/10 speeds, which is easily more than enough for one person, by a lot. Just plan your game downloads Intelligently, because it'll take a little while. But even at 25/5, you can game and watch 4K movies in the background with no problems at all.

And remember, upgrading speeds is just a short phone call or online order, and it upgrades instantaneously. So start with the lowest package at least 25/5, and you can always upgrade later if it's not enough.

Also, look into the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which every ISP participates in. It'll give you $30 a month off your ISP bill, and is incredibly easy to apply for and receive. It's not just for low income people; plenty of students, middle class families with a lot of kids, seniors, and guy getting started like you qualify. You can do it all online with your chosen ISP.

If you need or want your own router, right now, the very good, mid-tier ASUS AX68u is on sale for $99. That's a steal, usually $130:

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-WiFi-Router-RT-AX68U-Compatible/dp/B08S7CK5T5?th=1

But see if you get free hardware with your ISP.

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.

Replacing one mesh system with another rarely changes the effective range. All home equipment has a cap on transmission power by law, and just about every one of them uses this max limit, as it's very low and extremely easy to accomplish by any manufacturer. They also often use the same chipsets. They do often have different antenna patterns, so you will see some differences here and there, but it will not be drastic.

Rather, you should experiment with the placement of your Orbi nodes. Place them closer together than you might think. Do not place a node directly in a dead spot, but rather in between the dead spot and your main Orbi router. A good strategy is to place the secondary node in the center of your house on the same floor as your main Orbi, or on a different floor, but directly above or below your main Orbi. Often, just changing the angle of attack is enough to change a dead spot into a usable one.

If you're using wireless backhaul, try reducing the number of nodes to the minimum. Most houses only need two Orbi units at most, three for unusually large or weirdly shaped houses.

6 GHz actually has worse wall and floor penetration than 5 or 2.4 GHz, so that won't help you.

Finally, look carefully to see if you can potentially wire in some of your Orbis. If you have coaxial cable or old phone lines, they can often be converted to Ethernet. Doing so will allow you to wire in Orbis in many locations, giving you excellent WiFi coverage.

Your plan should work. MoCA is a great alternative. Those GoCoax Adapters are what I've used and recommend the most.

You need to either get a MoCA PoE Filter and connect it to the feed line coming from your ISP if you use cable Internet, or disconnect the feed line from any cable splitter if you're using fiber. All coax splitters between the adapters need to be MoCA compatible.

Also note that you can attach a switch to any MoCA Adapter in order to wire in multiple devices in the MoCA locations. Wiring in devices, especially in the office, gives them the most reliable results, and also unburdens your WiFi, which helps devices using WiFi.

As for an Access Point recommendation, I generally recommend either a Ubiquiti U6 Lite or U6 Pro if you want to spend a bit more and want a dedicated Access Point. But anything can work as an AP these days: my Ubiquiti recommendations, or another router set to Access Point Mode, or even a single mesh node set to Access Point Mode. It's not difficult or very different using any of these as a new Access Point.

It's a sophistry to geoblock China on security grounds and recommend and upvotes that advice, but then recommend Chinese hardware like TP Link Omada for the bedrock hardware for your home network. Yet I see TP Link Deco and Omada recommended on here every day, and upvoted into positive numbers too.

How could you possibly trust that geoblocking on Chinese hardware even works on their hardware? They get firmware updates from servers hosted in the USA, which in turn get firmware images from China. Obviously TP Link servers in the U.S. don't block China. So how effective is geoblocking if you went ahead and bought your hardware from a Chinese controlled company to save $100?

Same goes for Chinese security cameras. Everyone talks about using VLANs to isolate them, so their being compromised will not "spread" to the rest of your network. But if a compromised Chinese camera has the ability to crack the "root" account on Linux, Android, and IOS, and the "Administrator" account on Windows if left on the same VLAN, then why would it have any difficulty at all cracking the "admin" account on your router, rendering VLAN separation useless? What makes the router OS so much more resistant to takeover from that compromised IoT device versus other OSes?

It's the logic gymnastics that "security experts" on here must do to justify geoblocking China, but then recommending (or upvoting) TP Link Deco and Omada to save $100 that's hard to take seriously. Are they a threat or not? If so, how can you allow the recommendation of China owned company hardware to users with a straight face? Where is the precaution now?

What about smartphones? Smartphones all have GPS tracking, a camera, a microphone, and an Internet connection that's pretty much always on. They are the ultimate spying device that everyone carries voluntarily, even after experiencing events like talking about a certain product on the phone to your mother, and getting ads for that exact product as embedded ads hours later.

We might trust Alphabet and Apple not to sell our information to China and Russia directly, as they actually want to comply with Western laws. But isn't it also logical to believe that Alphabet and Apple sell personalized ad information to "reputable" buyers, who in turn sell it to a company that is degree less reputable, who in turn sells it to another company that's two degrees less reputable, and so on, until it gets to a seller that doesn't discriminate against any buyers, or are a front for the Chinese and Russian government itself?

They might not even need to buy this information through layers of middle men. TikTok has over 100 Million users in the US, mostly as an App on smartphones. TikTok is a Chinese owned company, and are very much a target for a complete banning by the U.S. government, but not quite there yet for everyone else (maybe due to foreign lobbying efforts?). Even with all these warning signs, 100 Million US users do not care or take it seriously, and film you and your family on their App behind your geoblocking firewall.

What about hostile governments using services that are completely legal in the U.S. directly? The same Intelligence agencies that recommend you geoblock Chinese inbound and outbound traffic have also warned that China and Russia use platforms like Facebook, X / Twitter, Instagram, and even Reddit as giant Propaganda and misinformation machines to influence politics and thinking in the West. Even now, these foreign influences still propagate unchecked, with only token "moderation" attempts to combat it (and how do we know we can trust these moderators?). The EU is currently threatening to de- platform X because of lax moderation efforts, right now, in real time.

So go ahead and geoblock China and the rest of the evil countries if it makes you feel better. But it's as effective as trying to keep your kid from looking at porn by blocking his MAC Address on your home network. There are so many other ways for access that you do not control that your single act of defiance is essentially meaningless in the bigger picture. Your personal information has already been packaged and sold to every available buyer, because we were all asleep at the wheel at the dawn of Social Media and smartphones, and did not control that information at all. Anyone and Everyone with an App or cookies were tracking and packaging you. Only recently have smartphone OSes begun to lock down your personal information, but it's far too little a decade too late.

The toothpaste is out of the tube.

Your diagram is fine, and a pretty standard "Advanced Home Network" we see around here.

Anything can be made to talk to anything across different VLANs by choosing to allow it on pfSense. If everything on one VLAN needs to talk to a server in another, you should evaluate if that server is in the right VLAN, or does it really belong with the others.

The big problem with VLANs in home environments is that you need to make so many exceptions just to get everything to work like you want. If you're trying to use VLANs as an extra step in security, how much security are you really getting with so many exceptions on pfSense?

Your layout and questions are not at all unusual, I guess I'm just always wondering if VLANs are being pushed too hard onto typical home users who will waste more time trying to tune them than any benefits they actually receive.

You're into tech, so it won't be a problem. I do suspect that you'll become lazy over time and just stick things in the main VLAN with broken promises to "fix it one day" as your personal time diminishes.

Post a link to this thread in the previous one. All those people in your original thread deserve to see this, but might not for whatever reason. Just reply to one of the many people begging for follow-up on the previous thread with a link to this one.

Got to give props to Spectrum on this one. They came out immediately and did right by you. It's surprising, and satisfying.

Also major props to the cabling experts in this sub for giving you all the words and ideas you needed to tell Spectrum to get such a good result. I honestly believe the cabling guys on here are changing so many families' lives for the better with their advice. It's one of the best free services on Reddit, yet still a secret.