Do I need a managed switch?

byalexandr · December 30, 2022

Hey all,

I'm in the process of upgrading my home network (ISP is AT&T Fiber), using an HP ProDesk 600 G1 (i5 4590) and HP NC360T NIC that I will be converting into a pfSense box. I also have two TP Link AC1200 APs coming to provide dual band WiFi around the house. This is all in an effort to mostly bypass the (literal garbage) AT&T BGW-210 gateway that drops connection on wired and wireless at even moderate amounts of load. Me along with a good portion of the household work from home, so dropped connection in the middle of Teams meetings and transferring files to and from a company VPN is not acceptable, even though the gigabit fiber line has adequate speed (when it is working).

Now to accompany all of this, my house is wired with CAT5e and has a patch panel in one of the bedroom closets. I plan on routing the network according to the diagram below, using a plugin (pfATT) to forward certificate requests to and from the AT&T gateway (allowing for a "true bridge" instead of just an IP passthrough); otherwise the NAT table, firewall, and all other packets go through pfSense which will hold the public IP address and be connected directly to the ONT.

Now, my home has like 5 bedrooms, and each room including the kitchen and living room have two RJ45 jacks in each faceplate. So there are quite a few CAT5e cables at the patch panel. I have a few network switches laying around, including a couple 4-port switches and an 8-port switch, so I can at least connect the most used RJ45 jacks. For simplicity though (and really to never have to trace cables or only have a few wall jacks connected at a time) I'm going to get a switch that has more ports; at least 16, maybe even a 24 port switch, which will allow me to plug every cable at the patch panel and have the entire house connected.

The question I have though, is would a managed switch provide any real benefit over a simple 16 or 24 port unmanaged switch? I have read that there are some benefits to having a managed switch with pfSense, but if pfSense is handling all the IP routing, etc. I'm not sure the extra cost of a managed switch it worth it, especially with a simple home network.

Needfuldoer · December 30, 2022

26 minutes ago, byalexandr said:

The question I have though, is would a managed switch provide any real benefit over a simple 16 or 24 port unmanaged switch?

Unless you want to go down the "overcomplicated home networking" rabbit hole and unnecessarily subdivide everything into little VLANs, an unmanaged switch will be just fine.