I live in an old house with thick walls, so wifi isn't great, and I've not really had much success with mesh either and powerline was unreliable, so I'm thinking of going to ethernet, or a mix of ethernet and wifi. Given the house configuration, time and skill limitations, It could get messy!
I've got fibre to the property, which links straight into my provider supplied (UK - EE) wifi router. I was using the remaining 3 hub ports in the router to a couple of devices, as well as a TP-Link 8 port hub. The 8 port hub was providing data to all of the local devices - TV, speaker, freeview box, home server, my one remaining Powerline adapter (running to the garage)
I have 2 other rooms with significant amounts of network capable kit in it. My office (main gaming PC, work laptop, speakers, etc) and print room (backup PC / server, large format printer). These were both connected via wifi, though the print room was REALLY slow being through a thick wall. My office is connected using a fibre provider mesh puck, and running an ethernet cable from that to my PC (laptop and speakers on wifi)
What I'm thinking of doing is buying 2 more hubs - one 5 port for the print room, and one 8 port for my office.
I obviously know nothing about networking. Hubs seemed the simplest option, but Is this going to work properly with more than 1 hub? should I have gone for switches? Am I going to run into any pitfalls?? Should I be doing something else here?
(FWIW, I also got a free ASUS RT-AX82U - AX5400 Dual Band WiFi 6 Gaming Router with a laptop I bought, that I haven't used because I just couldn't be bothered with having to reconfigure my wifi setup. Is this worth replacing my EE router with?)
I've got fibre to the property, which links straight into my provider supplied (UK - EE) wifi router. I was using the remaining 3 hub ports in the router to a couple of devices, as well as a TP-Link 8 port hub. The 8 port hub was providing data to all of the local devices - TV, speaker, freeview box, home server, my one remaining Powerline adapter (running to the garage)
I have 2 other rooms with significant amounts of network capable kit in it. My office (main gaming PC, work laptop, speakers, etc) and print room (backup PC / server, large format printer). These were both connected via wifi, though the print room was REALLY slow being through a thick wall. My office is connected using a fibre provider mesh puck, and running an ethernet cable from that to my PC (laptop and speakers on wifi)
What I'm thinking of doing is buying 2 more hubs - one 5 port for the print room, and one 8 port for my office.
- The existing 8 port hub would stay where it is and power my home media setup.
- The 5 port would be connected directly to the router via 10m ethernet cable and run to the print room, where it would connect my printer, backup PC and relocated home server.
- the new 8 port hub would be connected to my wifi puck in the office, and connect to my PC, laptop, speakers, etc. Ultimately I'd use ethernet here too, but that would require a lot of cable routing through / around / over the house
- Everything else (remaining speakers, tablets, laptops, etc) will run off wifi.
I obviously know nothing about networking. Hubs seemed the simplest option, but Is this going to work properly with more than 1 hub? should I have gone for switches? Am I going to run into any pitfalls?? Should I be doing something else here?
(FWIW, I also got a free ASUS RT-AX82U - AX5400 Dual Band WiFi 6 Gaming Router with a laptop I bought, that I haven't used because I just couldn't be bothered with having to reconfigure my wifi setup. Is this worth replacing my EE router with?)