Home internet network from scratch

[XobSod]

Hi guys and gals,
And I don't know if he ever reads it, but Hi Linus

I have been watching LTT for 4 or 5 years now and I have learned a lot. But still I'm not a hardware guy especially in the topic I want to bring now.

 

Long story short, I am buying an apartment, and as it is still being built, I have the possibility to alter the design plans for it. So the topic of today's exercise is to design a home internet network. I did some research and found some articles with tips I will try to implement, but I need your help with picking appropriate hardware.

 

I am one of the 'a cable is a cable, and no WI-FI will change that' guy, so I want to have 3-4 Ethernet sockets in each room, and maybe 6-8 in the main room (I know it is overkill, but we live in the times where you can plug a toaster to the internet, so who knows what the future will bring :). I image it all the cables converge in one place near the apartment entrance, where rack box will be hanging. Most probably I will be using CAT6e cable, so 1Gbit is max we can get. It would be nice if the whole setup is as quiet as possible, I don't want to enter the apartment and feel as if I entered server room I want to have one good, central router that will handle whole home network’s with WI-FI access points (PoE) for wireless transfer. I don’t want to play with all the internet mesh technologies when I have the opportunity to do everything right. I have Synology NAS and Intell NUC that would find its place at the bottom of the rack box as well I think. The usage of the network would be standard home usage, some PLEX streaming, some file transfers internally, some gaming, VOD streaming, nothing commercial, no enterprise usages. I know that the devices used will most probably be 'small home company' grade, but it would be great if Ph.D. of rocket science is not required to configure them I mean, I know how to configure networks, but also I know how not user-friendly can those devices be. And last but not least the price... you know, something affordable

 

Goals:
- 19" rack 6U-10U
- 1Gbit+
- 16 sockets (24 for future-proof?)
- router
- and switch?
- quiet? (passive cooling)
- PoE support? - may become handy

 

The articles that I was reading suggested Linkbasic WCB06-645-BAA-C rack but I am not very attached to it now. And it also suggested MikroTik devices because so... so this is the part where you come in. Please bring my plans down to earth and point the stupid things I just wrote, I am not much a networking hardware guy

 

[Kilrah]

Would probably go with ubiquiti stuff, they have nice PoE switches and roaming APs that go well with them. 

[XobSod]

Thank you for that response @Kilrah it looks very promising, but this is the first time I hear this name. I'll research them and return with more questions most probably. But thank you again

 

Any alternatives guys?

[mariushm]

 

You should use cat6a, just for future proofing, as it's capable of 10 gbps up to 100 meters 

Regular cat6 is good for up to around 55 meters (though I would stay below 40 meters)

 

You could customize wall sockets to place a 5 port switch in each wall - there are mikrotik switches that are powered using poe so a single network cable could both do data and poe to the switch. 

 

You could also include fiber ... nowadays there's a lot of 10g/40g switches being pulled from datacenters because they're moving to 25g / 100g so you could have 10g/40g  fiber to each wall outlet/socket 

 

Placing more than 2 ethernet ports on a wall ... seems like a waste. You will  be too lazy to have cable from a desk or computer to the wall or multiple cables to a wall. You'll probably end up with a small 5-8 port switch on your desk. 

Maybe have at least one port with power over ethernet just in case you'd set up voice over ip phones in each room, maybe have a cable going somewhere in the corners of your room in case you'll want to add surveillance cameras (that can probably be cheaper cat5e since cameras don't need more than 1gbps)

 

[XobSod]

20 hours ago, mariushm said:

You will  be too lazy to have cable from a desk or computer to the wall or multiple cables to a wall. You'll probably end up with a small 5-8 port switch on your desk.

That is exactly the thing I want to avoid

 

Yes, CAT6a is in fact a good suggestion, I even found out that CAT7 was released, I'll check with the developer what my options are. CAT7 theoretically support up to 100Gbit and is cheaper that fiber I think.

 

I checked quickly Ubiquiti stuff that Kilarh mentioned, and this Dream Machine Pro looks great, and theirs Switch supports PoE, that would give me several PoE sockets in each room

 

Someone has those devices? How are their noise levels under low/medium load?

(alternatives much appreciated)

[mariushm]

No, don't bother with Cat7 ... it's only for short distances and requires expensive and harder to install connectors and it's really not that suitable for wall outlets ... it's more of a patch cable (direct jack - jack cable)

 

In my fictional house, I'd route 4 fiber cables to a small rack (or just a box small enough to hold a network switch) in the corner of room or above the door somewhere out of the way... 4 x 10g or 40g qsfp+ ... and in the future it can be upgraded to 25g / 100g by changing transceivers on the switch, the fiber remains the same between the center server room and the switch in each room (and you can leave a few meters extra in the wall and cut fiber and splice new connectors if needed). In the same box, you can hide an access point, wireless thing just for that room.

For backup, I'd have a couple cat6a going to each wall outlet.

 

[XobSod]

OK, thank you for this information @mariushm... didn't know that. Then I'll aim for CAT6a.

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, XobSod said:

CAT7 theoretically support up to 100Gbit and is cheaper that fiber I think.

All the way until you discover no equipment exists for Ethernet that can achieve those speeds. Or until you find out that CAT7 is not TIA certified, which is the "Important" certification when it comes to Ethernet.