Question Setting up a wired network at home

[Phos23]

Hello everyone, I'm planning to connect all of my stationary devices at home with an Ethernet cable. Currently there are only two cables going out of my ISP router (orange colour on the plan), so only 2 devices are connected. I plan to connect 9 devices altogether, at three different rooms. I figured out I'd have to by 3 switches (green colour) and connect everything as on the plan.

1. I have no idea how to create such networks, so is it possible with the 3 switches as I plan to do so? My router would be connected directly to Switch1 on the ground floor and the Switch2 on the 1st floor. Switch3 would be connected directly to Switch1.

2. Is the low price range hardware good for it? I thought of buying 3x NETGEAR GS305E. The network would never be highly used, up to 3 different devices at a time.

3. Currently the orange cables are the Cat 5e, which I got when I had 100mbps speed (right now I'm on 1gbps, but I'm not planning to get anything faster for many years to come. DO you recon it's okay to stick to 5e or should I go straight to cat7 (or different) and be secured for much longer period and replace the current 5e if I ever upgrade over 1gbps)?

 

[bill001g]

Should be fine.

Not sure why you choose the CS305e, mostly it has feature like vlans you are not going to use. You could save $5 each by using say tplink.....even more if you buy plastic chassis switches made by say tenda.

In general all these switches even the really cheap ones do all the function inside a single asic chip. They can run all ports in and out at full speed all at the same time. So a 5 port switch could be passing 10gbit of data.....not that there is any realistic configuration that would use this.

This would allow say 2 devices to transfer data between each other on say ports 1 & 2 and another device on port 3 talk to the router on port 4 and not be impacted.

In your case the only thing you would worry about is say the ps4 was copying large amounts of data from your pc. Since the tv shares the cable between switch 2 and switch 3 with the ps4 it could be impacted.

This though is mostly theoretical. Almost nobody in a home setup comes anywhere close to use 1gbit of data.

Your cat5e cables are fine they will run full 1gbit to 300 meters. If you are actually going to run them in the walls then I would consider CAT6A. Cat7 was never finalized and cat6a can do 10gbit also. Currently there is only a very small premium for cat6a over cat6 and cat5e. BUT if these are just patch cables you run along the walls then use the cat5e until you actually need 10gbit. Patch cables can get damaged and you might have to replace it anyway. In wall cabling if you paid someone all the costs is in the labor to do it the difference in the wires costs is minimal.

 

[Phos23]

Should be fine.

Not sure why you choose the CS305e, mostly it has feature like vlans you are not going to use. You could save $5 each by using say tplink.....even more if you buy plastic chassis switches made by say tenda.

In general all these switches even the really cheap ones do all the function inside a single asic chip. They can run all ports in and out at full speed all at the same time. So a 5 port switch could be passing 10gbit of data.....not that there is any realistic configuration that would use this.

This would allow say 2 devices to transfer data between each other on say ports 1 & 2 and another device on port 3 talk to the router on port 4 and not be impacted.

In your case the only thing you would worry about is say the ps4 was copying large amounts of data from your pc. Since the tv shares the cable between switch 2 and switch 3 with the ps4 it could be impacted.

This though is mostly theoretical. Almost nobody in a home setup comes anywhere close to use 1gbit of data.

Your cat5e cables are fine they will run full 1gbit to 300 meters. If you are actually going to run them in the walls then I would consider CAT6A. Cat7 was never finalized and cat6a can do 10gbit also. Currently there is only a very small premium for cat6a over cat6 and cat5e. BUT if these are just patch cables you run along the walls then use the cat5e until you actually need 10gbit. Patch cables can get damaged and you might have to replace it anyway. In wall cabling if you paid someone all the costs is in the labor to do it the difference in the wires costs is minimal.

Great, thank you very much for such detailed answer!

I'd run the cables myself, not technically inside the walls, but trough the loft from one room to another, then some trunking, still a bit of a hassle, so I'd probably go for the cat6a straight away.

Regarding the switch, it's just something I found, according to what you said I could use anything like these two?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-LS1005G-Wallmount-Ethernet-Splitter/dp/B07VWB347G/ref=sr_1_4

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tenda-SG105-5-Port-1000-Switch/dp/B01LYER81B/ref=sr_1_3

Is there anything different about them what could impact my decision?

 

[bill001g]

Those will work. You save a bit because you do not need metal cases. If this was years ago I would hesitate on tenda mostly because warranty replacement is a pain. Now days you seldom see these small switches ever fail. I have not seen one taken apart for a while but they all used to use the same broadcom chip.