Help with Network Expansion

[trent.duncan]

Hi All,

 

Just a small tinkerer so will do my best to explain what I want to do and hopefully I can gain some insight.

 

Location: Australia, QLD

Internet Connection: Fiber to the Home - limited to 100mpbs (yes Aussie internet sucks, fast costs way too much)

Modem/Router: TPLink Archer AX10 (so this acts as my modem really)

 

I currently have a Netgear switch which has 16ports (8 are POE and 8 are standard). 

I also have Some access points which are hardwired (Ubiquiti): 

• 2x UAP-AC-Lite (inside the house
• 1x UAP-AC-M-Pro (mounted on roof - I live on property so wanted wifi in the yard)
• Cloud Key Gen2 Plus

There is also 5 data points inside the house connected to the switch. The switch is powering the Cloud Key Gen2 plus and the 3 access points.

 

So this is the current setup - hopefully I have explained that well enough. But now what I want to do.....

 

I have a 3 car bay shed in my yard which is about 20meters away from the house. I have built out 1 of the bay's to turn this into my entertainment room (computer, gaming, movies). Presently this is just a frame and I am having the electrician around in 2 weeks. My neighbour is a communications tech and has kindly offered to run a 10gb underground cable from my house to the shed. 

The shed will have need of 10 data points at this stage, so I am thinking adding another 16 port switch in the shed to split that 10gb cable coming through.

 

I question is going to stand around the switches, the one in the house which will connect to the shed and the AP's and other data points inside the house. The Switch in the shed is really just splitting that up to the 10 data points inside the shed. What suggestions can you give me around the switches (remember not an expert so like simple and easy to use)?

Do I even need to care about this?

Anything else I should be thinking about with this expansion?

 

If I have missed something or you need a little more info just ask.

Thanks in advance, 

Trent

[ColdFusion04]

Why do you need a 10G Connection to your house? I think he wants to run a fiberoptic cable?

 

What kind of data transfers will go between your house and the shed? Is it just Internet or do you want to do big data transfers?

What kind of devices will run inside the shed? 

 

Please consider, SFP-modules are fairly expensive, given that you could just run a copper cable (properly insulated and protected, but i recon your neighbor knows what he's doing) with 1G should suffice for 95% of your needs. The only need for 10G would be sitting in the shed and editing videos directly off of a storage that sits in the house. In this case it would be necessary to run 10G point-to-point, so it would be much cheaper to move the storage to the shed.

 

If you could elaborate on your data points, maybe i could help more...

 

[trent.duncan]

Thanks @ColdFusion04,
The main thing moving between house and shed and around will be movies running off my plex server (which is in the house). 

I Think the cable my neighbour wants to use is just because he has it laying around... and maybe a little bit of because he can LOL.

 

What are SFP-modules?

The shed will use most of the data, inside the house is mainly TV devices (smart tv's and apple tv's), besides the plex server. In the shed will be my gaming machine, consoles and of course my TV (smart). As I mentioned first off my internet connection is not big (yet), but I already have fiber to the home, so as our NBN open up cheaper and higher speeds I will upgrade. The cost of 200-300mpbs connections are already almost the same as what I pay now and friends of mine (another state) have 1gb connections. So I am trying to plan for scale later, not so much the now.

Hope that helps.

 

[ColdFusion04]

Thank you.

 

A movie stream needs 54Mbit uncompressed (FHD), so you shouldn't have any problems with 1Gbit. Even after upgrading, if you don't upgrade your internet connection to >1G i don't think there will be much of a bottleneck (especially because i don't think that every device in every location will stream movies in FHD at the same time).

 

A SFP is a connector for fiber optic cables (your switches have to be capable too)

(picture source: cisco.com)

 

[Falcon1986]

3 hours ago, trent.duncan said:

Do I even need to care about this?

Do you need to get a multi-gig switch now? If the uplink from the main house maxes out at 1 Gbps due to hardware limitation then I wouldn't worry to get more than a gigabit switch in the shed, and a simple unmanaged one at that unless if you need PoE as well.

 

The 10Gbps link is nice to have, but you'll need several upgrades at multiple points before you'll be able to take full advantage of it.

[trent.duncan]

Thank you all,

 

I guess the main question I have is really about the switch in the house and in the shed. Would they need to be the same branch to make it easier to manage (ie assign static IP's to certain devices), currently I do this via the modem as the switch is not a managed switch. 

[MrMase]

Looking at your setup I would look to do the following setup all in Ubiquiti:
House - USW-Aggregate for 10GB link to shed. Any devices you want connected at 10GB can be done via DAC cable or Copper Modules.
House - USW-24-PoE - Passively cooled POE switch (16 Ports) for Access Points etc. Connect this at 2GB to Aggregate switch using 2 x DAC cable due to 1GB port limitation, you will need to manually configure port speeds on each end.

 

Shed - USW-Aggregate for 10GB link, mirroring the house side

Shed - USW-24-PoE - Similar setup to house

 

Adds a lot more ports than you require but future proofing and is based on their currently available hardware.

 

Benefit is all can be managed by your Cloud Key.