Question Best Configuration for Small Home Network

[seymoorebutts]

Hey everybody,

I'm currently switching over from Optimum to GoNetSpeed Fiber, as Optimum just continued to hike their rates. Meanwhile, GNS's Fiber option will be a 500mbps over my current Optimum 300. Truth be told, the Optimum service was perfectly fine, and I usually don't utilize 300mbps down, but the shameless rate hikes while putting promo flyers in my mailbox for new customers only reached a bubbling point. Their retention department had no interest in keeping me.

The current setup is Optimum directly to my Arris Surfboard SB6190, then to my Google WiFi Router.

From there, I have 4 available Ethernet lines from different rooms connected to my Netgear GS605 Switch, which then goes to the Google router.

The issue is that the fiber ONT can more or less only be installed in my office, due to the apartment layout with other tenants. The CURRENT setup is in my pantry, this is where the Ethernet lines come together from the other rooms, and the Optimum line runs.

I currently have my rig setup on a wired connection to that switch, and I would like to keep the speed and stability there. But I would also like to keep the router and switch where they are currently placed, as their position is most conducive to the apartment layout and where the other room's Ethernet connections terminate.

Is there a way for me to route both my PC connection and ONT to the router that will not sacrifice bandwidth? From what I understand, splitting an Ethernet connection drops the lanes down to 100mbps, which I want to avoid.

What do?

Best,
Butts

 

[bill001g]

How fancy do you want to get.

If you physically split the cable you are limited to 100mbps. If you do it logically with vlans then it will kinda of act like 2 different cables that share a total of 1gbit of bandwidth. You could of course buy 2.5g ports if you in wall cabling is good enough.
You just have to pickup a couple small switches that support vlans. Tplink has a number of their smart switches that have vlan support and they are not much more expensive than dumb unmanged switches.

More why do you want to keep the router where it is, wifi ?

What you could do is move the router to the new room and the plug the in wall cable that goes back to the pantry to a lan port and directly plug your pc into a different lan port on the router. In the pantry you could then just connect everything to a dumb switch.
If you need wifi in the closet just buy a inexpensive router and use it as a AP.

 

[seymoorebutts]

How fancy do you want to get.

If you physically split the cable you are limited to 100mbps. If you do it logically with vlans then it will kinda of act like 2 different cables that share a total of 1gbit of bandwidth. You could of course buy 2.5g ports if you in wall cabling is good enough.
You just have to pickup a couple small switches that support vlans. Tplink has a number of their smart switches that have vlan support and they are not much more expensive than dumb unmanged switches.

More why do you want to keep the router where it is, wifi ?

What you could do is move the router to the new room and the plug the in wall cable that goes back to the pantry to a lan port and directly plug your pc into a different lan port on the router. In the pantry you could then just connect everything to a dumb switch.
If you need wifi in the closet just buy a inexpensive router and use it as a AP.

So I just did some testing, and the living room is definitely a blind spot with the router in the office.

That's the biggest issue, I avg ~270mbps to my phone and ~200mbps to the living room Chromecast with the router in the pantry.

With it in the office, phone is getting 30mbps and Chromecast is doing ~20, not suitable for stable 4K HDR bandwidth, + my phone, my fiance working on her laptop, etc.

If possible, I prefer everything where it is - what would doing a vlans setup entail? How can I test/check if my existing ports and wiring are good, or if I need to change the infrastructure?

With that setup, I'm assuming the ONT connection and my PC can share the port in the wall, that leads to the pantry with the dummy switch, without a disastrous downgrade in bandwidth?

 

[bill001g]

It will still likely be cheaper to place a AP in the closet acting as a wifi source so you would now have both the router and the new AP providing radio coverage.

Not sure about the 2.5g models they will be significantly more costly. 2.5g need cat6 cable but will run on cat5e if the distance is not long. In you case you should not need more since your internet is only 500mbps so you could run 500mbps on lan and 500mbps on wan. Of course if you were to say copy files to some nas in your house at the same time you would exceed 1gbit.

https://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-SG105E-5-Port-Gigabit-Version/dp/B00N0OHEMA

So lets say we have 2 vlans 10 and 20 but I will call then LAN and WAN even though you would use the numbers.

So in the room with with the new internet you would put port 1 on WAN ports 2-4 on LAN and port 5 on both LAN and WAN at the same time using tags. You would plug the ONT to port 1 and your pc to any port 2-4. You would plug the wall jack to port 5

In the central room you would configure the switch the same.....just to make things easy you can actually put any port number on any vlan it does not related to the physical port numbers on the other end.

So you would plug the wall connection going to the room with the ONT to port 5. You would plug the router WAN port into the WAN vlan on port 1. You would then plug one of the router LAN ports into the LAN vlan any port 2-4.

These are very basic so called smart switches. They will do the job but do not support some of the more fancy vlan concepts related to running redundant switches.

 

[seymoorebutts]

It will still likely be cheaper to place a AP in the closet acting as a wifi source so you would now have both the router and the new AP providing radio coverage.

Not sure about the 2.5g models they will be significantly more costly. 2.5g need cat6 cable but will run on cat5e if the distance is not long. In you case you should not need more since your internet is only 500mbps so you could run 500mbps on lan and 500mbps on wan. Of course if you were to say copy files to some nas in your house at the same time you would exceed 1gbit.

https://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-SG105E-5-Port-Gigabit-Version/dp/B00N0OHEMA

So lets say we have 2 vlans 10 and 20 but I will call then LAN and WAN even though you would use the numbers.

So in the room with with the new internet you would put port 1 on WAN ports 2-4 on LAN and port 5 on both LAN and WAN at the same time using tags. You would plug the ONT to port 1 and your pc to any port 2-4. You would plug the wall jack to port 5

In the central room you would configure the switch the same.....just to make things easy you can actually put any port number on any vlan it does not related to the physical port numbers on the other end.

So you would plug the wall connection going to the room with the ONT to port 5. You would plug the router WAN port into the WAN vlan on port 1. You would then plug one of the router LAN ports into the LAN vlan any port 2-4.

These are very basic so called smart switches. They will do the job but do not support some of the more fancy vlan concepts related to running redundant switches.

So as a test, I removed the dummy switch and took it to the office.

Currently, the ONT and PC are in 2 LAN ports on the switch, and the switch is fed into the ethernet port on the wall. That connection from the office is now run to the router in the pantry.

Running a test on the PC shows me at 500mbps up/down - am I limiting or compromising any part of the network by operating this way?

 

[bill001g]

This should not work. How did you connect the router lan and wan at the same time to the wall port.

If the ONT is actually a router then it might work. If you hook the wan port to the wall port you now have 2 different networks. If you used a LAN port you more or less have a AP but you have 2 different DHCP servers active and it will cause you issues.

Lets say you put a second regular switch in the closet so you can hook the lan and wan to the wall port. The router will now attempt to assign DHCP addresses to its wan port from it lan port. This would be the same as if you pluged cable wan to lan and then plugged another lan cable to the wall plate.

If the ONT is a only a modem it will be random which device gets the single IP.

 

[seymoorebutts]

This should not work. How did you connect the router lan and wan at the same time to the wall port.

If the ONT is actually a router then it might work. If you hook the wan port to the wall port you now have 2 different networks. If you used a LAN port you more or less have a AP but you have 2 different DHCP servers active and it will cause you issues.

Lets say you put a second regular switch in the closet so you can hook the lan and wan to the wall port. The router will now attempt to assign DHCP addresses to its wan port from it lan port. This would be the same as if you pluged cable wan to lan and then plugged another lan cable to the wall plate.

If the ONT is a only a modem it will be random which device gets the single IP.

The ONT I believe just operates as a modem.

The Netgear dummy switch has the connections from the ONT and my PC. From there, it is feeding to the router in the pantry.

So if I am understanding correctly, all of my wireless connections will belong to their own network associated with the router, but my PC will not have the ability to detect/communicate with the devices directly on that network?

The solution would be a smart switch with VLANS that could assign all of the attached ethernet connections to a single network, and route that all to the ONT fiber?

So far I have not run into any issues after a few hours with connections or speed, where would I see problems involving DHCP?

 

[bill001g]

I don't know it almost can't work if the ONT is only a modem. What ip address does your pc have. Does it have a public IP address. What does it say is the DHCP server. If it is actually a modem then the DHCP server should be the ISP router.

If your PC works then check the wan ip on the router. It may not have a IP. You generally only get a single IP from the ISP and if you PC has it then the router won't have one.

If the ONT is actually a router then ONT has the IP from the ISP and it giving private IP to your internal devices.

 

[seymoorebutts]

My IPv4 address is a 100.xx.xx.x range, and my IPv4 DHCP server is listed as the same address.

It does say for IPv6 "no network access", if that affects anything.

The ONT is a Nokia G-010G-A if that is helpful. Cannot find wan IP any it anywhere.

 

[bill001g]

100.x.x.x is what is called a carrier grade nat ip range. It is a special IP range that are private IP used by ISP. The device you have is not a router so your device is getting the IP from the remote isp router.

Normally even with this type of IP the ISP will only give you one. If you check the router and it also has a IP like this it might partially work.
You still have the problem of your PC being on the WAN side of your router so it could not talk to the other device on the LAN side.

Not sure what to recommend other than not to do it this way. Most times if you hook 2 devices to a modem/ont only one will function. If in your case you have multiple then what you have is not what you normally see.
In addition to having 2 networks in your house the WAN network you have exposes your machine to other users of the ISP. A router acts as a dumb firewall. If someone were to attempt to access the IP you were given the router would not know which of your internal machines to give the traffic to.
It would instead just drop the data. Without a router your machine can be directly accessed. It is not as bad as if you have a actual public IP where anyone in the world could attack your machine but other users of your ISP could access your machine possibly.

I would either go with the vlan solution or just place another router in between the ONT and your other equipment.

 

[seymoorebutts]

It will still likely be cheaper to place a AP in the closet acting as a wifi source so you would now have both the router and the new AP providing radio coverage.

Not sure about the 2.5g models they will be significantly more costly. 2.5g need cat6 cable but will run on cat5e if the distance is not long. In you case you should not need more since your internet is only 500mbps so you could run 500mbps on lan and 500mbps on wan. Of course if you were to say copy files to some nas in your house at the same time you would exceed 1gbit.

https://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-SG105E-5-Port-Gigabit-Version/dp/B00N0OHEMA

So lets say we have 2 vlans 10 and 20 but I will call then LAN and WAN even though you would use the numbers.

So in the room with with the new internet you would put port 1 on WAN ports 2-4 on LAN and port 5 on both LAN and WAN at the same time using tags. You would plug the ONT to port 1 and your pc to any port 2-4. You would plug the wall jack to port 5

In the central room you would configure the switch the same.....just to make things easy you can actually put any port number on any vlan it does not related to the physical port numbers on the other end.

So you would plug the wall connection going to the room with the ONT to port 5. You would plug the router WAN port into the WAN vlan on port 1. You would then plug one of the router LAN ports into the LAN vlan any port 2-4.

These are very basic so called smart switches. They will do the job but do not support some of the more fancy vlan concepts related to running redundant switches.

So I have the TP Smart Switch now setup in my office, but I cannot seem to configure it to get a connection sent out to the router.

Currently I have it configured as you described in your comment, but I do not see where I can assign tags to a port to share between each VLAN

 

[bill001g]

You need 2 switches one on each end of the cable to carry the vlan tags.

I am not sure how to describe it better than the manual shows. I really hate GUI based stuff because I can't just give you commands you could paste into the switch like say a cisco commercial switch.

There should be a memu that says 802.1q on the top that allows you to place vlans onto ports with a tag.

Maybe there is a youtube video

 

[seymoorebutts]

You need 2 switches one on each end of the cable to carry the vlan tags.

I am not sure how to describe it better than the manual shows. I really hate GUI based stuff because I can't just give you commands you could paste into the switch like say a cisco commercial switch.

There should be a memu that says 802.1q on the top that allows you to place vlans onto ports with a tag.

Maybe there is a youtube video

I have options for MTU VLAN, Port Based VLAN, 802.1Q VLAN, and then 802.1Q PVID Setting

 

[seymoorebutts]

You need 2 switches one on each end of the cable to carry the vlan tags.

I am not sure how to describe it better than the manual shows. I really hate GUI based stuff because I can't just give you commands you could paste into the switch like say a cisco commercial switch.

There should be a memu that says 802.1q on the top that allows you to place vlans onto ports with a tag.

Maybe there is a youtube video

I'm rereading our conversation, I think I understand where the issue here lies. With this configuration, I would need 2 smart switches if I am understanding correctly? One in the office, one in the pantry?

 

[bill001g]

Yes you need 2 switches.

The switch will place tags on the packets you need something on the other end to take the tags off the packets and place the packets on the proper ports.

What 802.1q does is in effect create a virtual cable. It needs a box on both ends, normal equipment only see the actual physical cable.

I guess I should have been more clear, got side tracked on the other solution.