requesting network help

[gator81]

I will try to make this short :) 

I am trying to redo the network in my home as traffic has been pretty congested lately, understand that I have my kids and grandkids living with me and over 50 connections to a home network of wired, and wireless devices. I am not big on wireless so I have been researching on putting wired throughout the house without having a to run a trunk to everywhere from one location.

I now have fiber gigabit service and a ok router from the company. I am running that to another linksys router as the permissions I can set are easier to work with to limit times for the grandchildren so they dont try to play all night long. I am going into a 24 port gigabit switch and wires run to other small switches in my home to handle multi devices better and keep from making a lot of cable runs for one room.

I know have traded and have a couple of gigabit switches that also have the 1gb fiber ports and this is where I have been unsure of what steps to work towards.

would it be better to just setup the switches in each room with single cat 7 cable or since these have fiber ports us single fiber? I found a company where i can get the sfp modules and fiber for about the same cost of the cat 7.

also can a switch that has 2 of the fiber connections can one be to one switch and the other to another switch. In other words one goes to switch in living room and other goes to switch in another room. Or would i have to run it single as main to living room and then living room to next room.

Most of what I have is from trading work or other items I have to get where I am and most of what I am doing I have learned on my own or with friends. I am sorry if i have something named wrong and hope you may understand what I am trying to better understand. It may not be something I can do for awhile as I am a vet and fighting with a work disability right now so money is tight.

I would be greatfull for any thoughts someone may have.

 

thank you LTT as I have learned alot and then there is alot that is far from what I could every work with :/

 

Lane

[trufret]

Cat 6A is way cheaper than Cat 7 and can still do 10 GB networking if you are trying to future proof your wiring.  Since all your gear is only 1GB you could get by with Cat5e if you wanted.

Not sure where you are getting bulk fiber and SPF Modules for the same price as copper cable but if you can then more power to ya.

Just keep in mind that unless they are pre terminated fiber runs you will have to purchase the equipment to terminate and test the fiber or contact a company to do that for you.

 

Normally I would say run multiple cables to each room in your house and have them all run back to your core switch but that can be difficult unless its new construction or during a remodel.

 

You can chain switches together but you create a larger and larger bandwidth bottle neck the more switches/devices are on a single chain going back to your core switch. If you were using fiber with 10GB SPF modules than it is less of a issue but still not a great design.

 

I don't know how many branches you are planning on making but without planning for business grade redundancy I'd say:

Run your ISP router into your core GB switch

Run a single cable (1GB or 10GB) from your core switch to each room that needs connectivity.

Place a branch switch at the end of those runs in those rooms for end user devices to connect to.

You can go from the core switch through a branch switch to another branch switch if you must but I would try and avoid that if possible for troubleshooting and performance reasons.

 

[gator81]

right now i have traded and have:

netgear gs724T has 2 sfp

netgear gs716T has 2 sfp

Dell 2624 has 1sfp 

Linksys WRT 1900acs

 

I have never really worked with a smart switch so i am just using it as a reg switch right now and letting my linksys router to assign ip's, parental control and dual wifi. I turned off the wifi and dhcp on the providers box.

So I am going from the provider to the linksys using a different ip pool and the providers box just passes the control to the linksys. I then pass from the linksys to the 724T and have run lines through out the house. Right now I am running cat5e that I cut and make as needed.

 

I may not have my numbers correct but at one time i had a shopping cart with 4 sfp 1g modules with one having a 25ft fiber and the other a 50ft and I had added some extras to get the free shipping as shipping was almost as much as what was in the cart and without shipping it was less then 100$. As for termination from what I thought I had read the sfp modules handle that. I was looking at fiber even with 1g setup to still handle bottle neck issues better then cat cable.

 

My thoughts was to use the 724T as starting area switch, then the 716T in my living room and the Dell for kids upstairs bedrooms. I was hoping to make both runs from the 724T which would be using one sfp to the living room and the 2nd sfp to the upstairs bedroom.

 

So I guess one of the first questions is would there be any speed difference from a bottleneck between switches using cat cable or fiber during heavy traffic times of the day? Has anyone tested this before and could someone direct me to a sight that I can compare test?

I also need to start learning more about the smart switch and consider removing the linksys which would be one less piece of hardware.

 

thank you for the update, I will try to find where I was going to order the sfp and the fiber so you will know where i am talking about, i just cannot be in a super hurry as I have no money and have to try and save again

 

Lane

[trufret]

If you connect the switches with fiber at 1 Gbps or copper at 1Gbps you are still getting 1Gbps.

You could get 10 Gbps fiber modules or 10 Gbps copper modules for your switches as well if you need to increase the trunk bandwidth between the switches.

Really, for your purpose, Fiber and Cat6A will perform pretty much the same.

 

I've worked mostly with Cisco gear but the basic concepts of switching, vlans, etc... should be similar among brands with some different commands to enable them.

If you want to learn how to configure switches and other networking gear Cisco's Packet Tracer or GNS3 are good tools for simulating networking gear and there are tons of videos and documentation online to teach you about networking and hardware config.

 

For a basic home setup you shouldn't need to configure much on the switches besides maybe login security and IP address unless you want to use it as a home lab to learn on as well.

[gator81]

I dont want to overthink this and sorry If i am trying to make it harder then what it is so I will try to put it in another way and see if I am still in the same boat.

Will there be a different latency between the two? which will make it harder for one to maintain the higher speed for larger files or streaming? They both may be rated for the same top speed but how fast, how long it can maintain that speed is my question i guess.

When I test from the providers router with 2 computers and both of them are using cable from the same spool and I had even changed cables to pre-made cables to verify my test. One computer was within 8ft and the other computer was about 25ft away from the router. After doing multi speed test the one further away was slower. I also validated this more by switching the computers where they were and tested again and still the further one was slower. They did both reach that Gbps speed but in the avg the further one was slower then the one closer. I did the test with att speedtest, speedtest and a couple others that I had found for high speed testing. This is why i was thinking sfp with fiber between the switches so a lower latency.

 

For home setup I have to learn more, I believe Linus did a video with the netgear gs724t smart switch and need to find the next video he did after the unboxing one. I have to have more security setup due to grandkids getting into things they dont need and catching them on the computer when they should of been asleep. What i have with the linksys i can set filters, block ips and set times when they have internet access without taking away from the home network that is used for media streaming. I am thinking i can do the same with the smart switch and let it assign ips to mac addresses where only the mac has access to the home. I am also in an area where there are about 12 other wireless networks that are close and may be causing issues

 

the home lab idea has motivated me more to learn my other options and being disabled gives me something to focus on instead of pain .....

 

thank you all for helping as I dont have money for fiber right now but i have options and a desire to meet a goal for my family

 

P.S.

Thanks to my wife and kids for moving stuff for me as I cannot..... I needed to post this so they can see I am greatful

[GraphicGORE]

 

5 hours ago, gator81 said:

I dont want to overthink this and sorry If i am trying to make it harder then what it is so I will try to put it in another way and see if I am still in the same boat.

Will there be a different latency between the two? which will make it harder for one to maintain the higher speed for larger files or streaming? They both may be rated for the same top speed but how fast, how long it can maintain that speed is my question i guess.

 When I test from the providers router with 2 computers and both of them are using cable from the same spool and I had even changed cables to pre-made cables to verify my test. One computer was within 8ft and the other computer was about 25ft away from the router. After doing multi speed test the one further away was slower. I also validated this more by switching the computers where they were and tested again and still the further one was slower. They did both reach that Gbps speed but in the avg the further one was slower then the one closer. I did the test with att speedtest, speedtest and a couple others that I had found for high speed testing. This is why i was thinking sfp with fiber between the switches so a lower latency.

For the most part Cat6a is find for home use. There should be no latency difference between fiber and copper. Make sure your Router has a enough CPU power and a good amount ram (4gb-8gb) as packet filter and firewalls can eat up a lot of memory and so can other such services. For the most part fiber is not needed, as Fiber is mostly use in the 10 Gigabit +  (example 40Gbit and 100gbit links) or very long run over 300 meters. Also fiber is much harder to work with and test equipment can easily get into the 4 digit range. 

 

The distance between it so small it should make no difference.It could be a configuration issue or the computers them self could be an causing the issue . Also a better way to test speed is to use a tool call iperf which is used to test speed and jitter on the line. I would get jperf as it has a gui and is much easier to use.

 

5 hours ago, gator81 said:

 For home setup I have to learn more, I believe Linus did a video with the netgear gs724t smart switch and need to find the next video he did after the unboxing one. I have to have more security setup due to grandkids getting into things they dont need and catching them on the computer when they should of been asleep. What i have with the linksys i can set filters, block ips and set times when they have internet access without taking away from the home network that is used for media streaming. I am thinking i can do the same with the smart switch and let it assign ips to mac addresses where only the mac has access to the home. I am also in an area where there are about 12 other wireless networks that are close and may be causing issues

 

Firewall and ip blocking are all done on the router end and that is Layer 2 switch and does not have that function. One way is can set up multiple subnet ,for example one subnet you can use and the other your kids can use. This would allow you to filter the ip address of that subnet. Vlsm Calculator is good tool to help you break up your network in to smaller subnets. Then you have to setup multiple Vlans or have multiple switches each connected to different port on your router. There alot of tutorial online on how to do this. If you have any question or do not understand something i can help you as and walk you though it. 

[NEXUS2345]

I have some concerns both about the ISP router and the Linksys router. What model is it from Linksys? With a gigabit internet connection and 50 clients, I would be very worried about the router being overwhelmed, to the point where changing a connection type won't improve it. 

[gator81]

Nexus, you may look up a few post and I posted the hardware I am working with and the router... Its a wrt1900acs. For the most part as I have had it configured everything seem to work pretty good until Dec of last year. I may of had more devices added due to the holidays and it just overloaded the linksys causing more problems. I would need to consider other options to lessen my loads.

 

I may need to go back to the drawing board and do some more studying. Kinda hard for someone that has been out of school for over 30yrs hehe. 

 

Graphicgore: so because the switch will not have the layer 2 options I may be making this to hard for myself. I am doing something like what you have mentioned already. I looked and I am using the ATTs modem which is 5268ac and it has a 4 port switch on it but settings are to limited for what I need. There is an option to do a passthrough and i did that to my linksys router but I needed to set the ip of my router to a different subnet as it would conflict with the 5268ac. I did that and have everything working. I also had turned off the option of the 5268ac for dhcp and turned off the wireless as the wireless was causing some issues. Everything has been working untill about dec and I am still having issues. I have also did a connect to att to make sure that I was not being limited and my test where fine.

I may not be posting for a short time as I will have to do more research on the vlans so I better understand them. I have some other thoughts, I just need to start doing my own research more as it will help me learn and not feel that I am trying to get someone else to do the work for me.

Guess thats what I get for thinking that this would be a easy and quick fix. I could just kick everyone else off and just use it for myself but i see in the future that my life would be filled with a lot of stress from my wife and kids and grandkids hehehe.

 

Again thank you all for the additional help, I will try to follow back up if I seem to be stuck or need a fresh idea or to let you know what worked

 

Lane

 

P.S.

 

I just did an edit and added to this post. Would anyone have the disc that comes with the Netgear GS724Tv3? I have download smart control center and smart wizard from netgear site but from the videos I have been watching and research there is something still missing in getting this setup right. I know Linus may have a disc around and someone else may have the disc or know where I can download the entire iso of the disc. Thanks in advance