Setting up home network for a large house

[tbonfig]

Hello all

I am hoping that someone can provide me some clarity. I tried searching for similar questions on this forum and other ones like it and have largely been unsuccessful because I am a little cloudy on what the best solution is for my situation.

We recently purchased a large, older home that requires multiple routers or access points to have a connection throughout the home. We also have a detached garage and a detached home gym. When we bought the house, we did some renovations, so I had CAT6 cables run to multiple floors and multiple rooms (including the garage).

My networking setup begins in my laundry room, which is on the lowest level of the home. There I have a 24-port unmanaged TRENDnet switch (TEG-S24DG) with an ASUS RT-AC88U router. I'm also running an Arris surfboard modem. In my master bedroom, which is two floors above the laundry room, I have an Asus RT-AC68U router. Then in the garage area, I have a crappier, older Netgear router that I am not even sure of the model number at this point. It was probably a throw in from a few years ago when I signed up for internet service.

Since I've lived here, we have basically been using the setup as three separate wifi connections in the house. We more recently purchased some items to connect to the network (some Amazon Echo devices and a Bitdefender box) which now makes me want to have a more unified approach to home networking.

I'm clueless here. I know mesh networking is a thing and that Asus has AiMesh which is supposed to turn those routers into a mesh network, but I believe since I have a wired connection throughout the house, the better alternative for me would to create multiple access points? How does that actually function, though? Would it be a smooth handoff if I were to start a video on one floor and continue watching it at another point in the house?

If my post is ignorant of other reading material, I would be happy to delete and do some further research, but I would really appreciate if there was someone who could just point me in the right direction as to what I should be doing to get the best coverage in my home.

Thank you in advance. I've lurked for years on this forum and found good answers to things I was curious about, hoping I can help someone else out in a similar situation.

 

[eibgrad]

http://linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/single-ssid-with-wds-network-or-other-choices.74023/

 

[failboat]

You really only want one NAT and one DHCP server.

modem/router (configured for passthrough)-> ASUS router WAN-> LAN to switch -> switch to LAN of each access point. the BD box may need to be between the router and switch to see all traffic.

Configure the other routers to be access points by turning off the DHCP server and configuring the web admin page to be a static in the subnet from your ASUS router.

Write down all the web admin ips and the gateway ip from the ASUS. Make sure nothing conflicts. When you put a device on check it's ip and gateway to make sure it's on the correct one. If you can't do a passthrough on the modem then nest the routers by putting them on different subnets or make the ASUS an access point.

subnet 1: 192.168.1.0/24 gateway 192.168.1.1

Mesh wifi is for people who can't run wires. if you want new stuff buy unifi access points and an edgerouter.

 

[failboat]

the benefit of having everything on the same layer2 is for discovery. which is used in the smart things to find each other on the network.

when you nest routers the NAT of the last one blocks connections coming into the WAN port. discovery def doesn't work, and even trying to ping a pc behind the NAT won't work or connecting to a file share via ip. the NAT blocking inbound connections is the most important line of defense for the internet. you just need the one where your isp comes into your home network. It's a pain when they are nested in your network, because you are blocking yourself from your own equipment.