Home network upgrade

arandomscott · July 24, 2021

Good evening all,

I've been doing a bit research as I am wanting to upgrade my home network and run cat 6 to various points in the house.

Currently I am using a ASUS RT-AX86U and its fine apart from a few issues mainly wifi not reaching as far as I'd like and I'm sure my Samsung Q80T TV is allergic to it because it connects and soon as you turn the tv off you got to restart the router if you want to reconnect the TV.

I currently has a PC/Server and NAS all with 2.5gb ethernet ports.

I also have a bunch of devices which use wifi 6 and I currently have 1gb internet connection.

I would eventually in time like to also set up a bunch of POE CCTV cameras.

I have been weighting towards picking up the following:

Dream Machine Pro
USW-16-POE
Few wireless access points undecided

I've been doing a bit of reading and there seems to be a bit of mixed reviews and I'm asking my self is this going to last the next 10 years because I fully expect to have faster internet in the next 5 years and with all the ports only being 1gb with no 2.5gb ethernet and only access to 10gb via SFP.

Is there a better route I can go for similar money?

Falcon1986 · July 26, 2021

On 7/24/2021 at 5:49 PM, arandomscott said:

Is there a better route I can go for similar money?

Yes, there is. You can look into building your own pfSense box or purchasing a firewall appliance with pfSense-compatibility and multi-gigE ports. With the former, you can upgrade the NICs and other components as your needs expand. This might be the best balance of cost and upgradability.

And you can definitely still use Ubiquiti/UniFi hardware with a pfSense firewall. As a matter of fact, there might be more features in pfSense that you won't find in the UniFi Controller when it comes to more advanced setups.

On 7/24/2021 at 5:49 PM, arandomscott said:

I'm sure my Samsung Q80T TV is allergic to it because it connects and soon as you turn the tv off you got to restart the router if you want to reconnect the TV.

Some smart TVs will not connect to WiFi broadcasts outside a certain channel range. When you restart your wireless router it can auto-select a new broadcast channel that the TV can connect to. Unfortunately, this information isn't always printed in the user manual. You just have to experiment and remember which channels work.

Also, ensure the wireless security and encryption of your network are supported by the TV. I've used older Samsung TVs that wouldn't connect to my WPA2-only networks; had to run the network in WPA/WPA2 for compatibility.

arandomscott · July 26, 2021

Thanks for your reply Falcon, I have seen PFsense mentioned a lot in my research, would their be anything else you would recommend I forgot to mention that I also host a game sever from home.