[SOLVED] Recommendations for network

[Scienceguy941]

I am looking for recommendations on a network setup. I have a main spot all the cat 5e comes to in the basement with the ONT next to it. I am trying to setup a system where I can setup access points to 2 of the spots that have at least a 1 gigabit connection that have wifi 6e and allow seamless roaming. Then have one of cables setup to a desktop directly with a 2.5 gigabit connection. So a router or switch with a firewall that is easy for a novice user. Thanks!

 

[SamirD]

Get a switch and then a router for the ont. Get something like the asus routers with aimesh and use them in access point mode. Your 2.5Gbps will depend on the nic and switch, but if it is a point-to-point 2.5Gb connection, only both ends will need to be 2.5Gb--oh and your cabling needs to be properly spec'd and terminated.

 

[bill001g]

I suspect your main problem is gong to be the ability to actually buy wifi6e. There are now a couple of manufacture that have wifi6e models but finding someone actually selling the units is another thing. Many of the units have list prices I consider outrageous and the few units I have seen are from scalpers who have raised the prices even more.

By this time I expected we would see wifi6e unit being sold from all the no name brands forcing the larger brands to sell more than just their most expensive model. It is very strange you can easily get wifi6 routers which use all the same chips except 1 radio and that is just a frequency change the rest is normal wifi6.

You need to really think if you can actually use 2.5g for anything. You are going to increase the cost of your install so you want to actually not be wasting your money. It will not of course make your internet run any faster. You would have to have a application that runs inside your house that can take advantage of this. Some kind of file server or something. You would for example have to have multiple other machines in your house using your pc with the 2.5g port as a sever. To use it any other way you would need something else in your house that also can run 2.5 or faster. Also be aware the disk and file system in many machines can bottleneck you so it is much more than a network design to get high performance transfers.

It tends to be very rare for anyone to even be able to use 1gbit on a consistent basis. I would ignore the 2.5g port and design as if you have all 1gbit. The largest issue is cat5e is not rated to run 2.5g and replacing in wall cabling tends to be very expensive.

Other than that you follow the above post buy a router a switch and some AP.

A firewall has no purpose unless you intend to have some kind of server on the internet. That NAT in a simple router protects your internal machine from attack. Most the other feature firewalls claim related to "deep packet inspection" no longer work because all data is encrypted.

 

[SamirD]

The largest issue is cat5e is not rated to run 2.5g and replacing in wall cabling tends to be very expensive.

This is actually not correct as 2.5Gb running on existing cat5e is one of its strong points:

https://www.flukenetworks.com/blog/...ll-my-existing-cable-plant-support-255gbase-t

 

[faalin]

I work for a smallish company. We had used sonicwall firewalls and HP switches, about 5 years ago we switched to cisco meraki on everything. While i dont expect you to go this route it has been nice from an IT standpoint as you can track just about everything on the network.

For home i use Ubiquiti firewall, switches, and AP's. While it doesnt have as many tracking features as the Cisco Meraki stuff at work it is still very nice and im able to move through out the house without loosing WIFI at all.

The hardest part about Ubiquiti is downloading the desktop app, setting that up and adopting all the devices.

 

[bill001g]

This is actually not correct as 2.5Gb running on existing cat5e is one of its strong points:

https://www.flukenetworks.com/blog/...ll-my-existing-cable-plant-support-255gbase-t

This is very much getting into the grey area when they start to list cable lengths. Pretty much this says if you take a fluke meter and certify the cable it will work at that length. This just makes it even more confusing for consumers because they have no real way to know if a cable will work for sure.
I mean lots of stuff works that technically is out of spec. I have used untwisted telephone cable and you can get it to run at 1gbit for short distances that just means I was lucky. We also see all the fake cable that "mostly" works.

The question would more be does what is printed on the outside of a cable really matter. If you could not see the cable but it passed a the tests for cat6a that makes the wire cat6a even if it was sold as cat5e. Then again I have seen cable that is suppose to be certified cable fail fluke test and they had to pull it out and rerun it.

Tables like this tempt home users putting in new cable to save pennies rather than doing it correctly.

I guess I pretty much have ignored 2.5g which is why I didn't know this. Business still mostly uses 10g when they need performance. It seems the 2.5g ports are mostly sold into the end consumer market where I think it is more bragging rights than a actual need. Businesses are moving more and more to cloud based stuff and the end user stations are becoming more what they used to call thin clients. Any high speed networking would be inside the data center and not on the cables going to the end stations.

 

[SamirD]

Yep, you and I know how shady cabling has gotten as well as how some out of spec stuff will actually work when it is not spec'd to do so.

2.5Gbps hasn't really been on anyone's radar, but it is picking up steam now that isps are starting to offer Internet speeds >1Gbps. I think this will be a driver of 2.5Gbps, especially in small business where the extra bandwidth without rewiring will be useful.