Question Home network swicth needed...

[albertc30]

Hi everyone.

I have an increased need to purchase a managed swicth for the house/home office. I come from a networking background (Cisco CCNA) but that was just before VOIP and I have been out of the trade for the past 11 years. Still love my cisco command line rather than the GUI, lol.

Anyways, with two kids and their two gaming machines, to laptops and IOTs around the house, CCTV to be installed and wife working from home is time to get that much needed managed switch. I currently have a Draytech Vigor router with my Starlink (it's the fastest thing I could have at the time) and I am a few weeks away from having my fibre installed at the house. Just some conduit to be installed at the front of the house into the loft where the 11U rack is. Everything will be centred and managed there.

Now, I have seen some cloud based managed swicthes, sorry but call me old fashion but I want to manage my network locally and yes remotely but I'm not interested in cloud based management, especialy when it seems they can charge an arm and a leg. Every thing in the house will be segmented into their own VLANs, like IOT, BTC_Nodes, CCTV (POE), Kids, Work etc...

The swicth must have at least a few POE ports. I was thinking at least 24 ports minimum 1Gbps, or 2.5Gbps depending on the price. The entire house has been wired in Cat 6E and the distances are less than 20 meters max run to each point. There will be a bigger run at one point to the Garden Office once it's built, so maybe at least one or two faster ports that could accomodate a fibre link to the office, but that's not a deal breaker.

There is just so much out there that I don't even know where to begin. My 13 year old son loves Ubiquiti but I just think whilst they might be qulity they're also a very hypped brand, and from what I was told by a few people is that these devices are much loved because of their easy GUI. I was contemplating the TPLink Omada series but again, there's a mine field out there. I will also have a WAP to go with the network.

If possible, what has everyone got to a similer situation for your house? What would you advise to be the best bang for buck?

Any help with this is well and trully appreciated. Budget for this is set at £300 to £500 tops.

Much appreciated for your time.

Regards,
Albert

 

[bill001g]

If all your cables are home run to a central location it might just be easier to use different physical switches. Poe adds a lot to the cost of a switch and if you would just have a smaller switch just for that it would save you money.

All you really need are the lower end smart switches from companies like tplink . These are a form of managed switch that does not have all the feature you are likely never going to use in a home install. They support vlans which is the most common feature people want.

I suspect your largest issue is going to be a router/firewall to handle any rules about traffic between all the different subnets. I would use a small pc running one of linux firewall packages. There are almost no consumer routers that support vlans...or if they do they do they support only the vlan part not the ability to run mulitple IP gateways.

I would avoid making stuff too complex. A lot of people just use 2 consumer routers. They use the main ISP router for the IOT crap and then plug a second router in to create another network for everthine else. The simple NAT function prevent any access but still allows the devices behind the second network to have full access to IOT things but not the reverse.

 

[albertc30]

If all your cables are home run to a central location it might just be easier to use different physical switches. Poe adds a lot to the cost of a switch and if you would just have a smaller switch just for that it would save you money.

All you really need are the lower end smart switches from companies like tplink . These are a form of managed switch that does not have all the feature you are likely never going to use in a home install. They support vlans which is the most common feature people want.

I suspect your largest issue is going to be a router/firewall to handle any rules about traffic between all the different subnets. I would use a small pc running one of linux firewall packages. There are almost no consumer routers that support vlans...or if they do they do they support only the vlan part not the ability to run mulitple IP gateways.

I would avoid making stuff too complex. A lot of people just use 2 consumer routers. They use the main ISP router for the IOT crap and then plug a second router in to create another network for everthine else. The simple NAT function prevent any access but still allows the devices behind the second network to have full access to IOT things but not the reverse.

I remember when TPLink was cheap as anything and just used as means to an end, lol. They seem to have improved much in the past 20 years. As I have my Draytek Router Vigor 2865AC and I'm quite confortable with this brand, I'm thinking about getting one of their swicthes and just add to the existing network.

been looking at the swicth on the link bellow...

Draytek Swicth

The only think putting me off is the cloud managment and the license fees.

Still, I'm open to ideas and what's out there.

Many thnaks.

 

[cruisetung]

Probably switches from Microtik?

https://mikrotik.com/products/group/switches