Networking Hardware suggestions

[Simperson]

I'm about to embark on making an actual network for my house beyond the simple all in one router (carrier provided) plus switch for extra ports. I'm not a network professional by any means but being an IT profession in general I've had to deal with networking plenty of times to know more than the basics. I see LTT using a lot of Ubiquiti equipment but not sure I want to go that route. I'm looking for something relatively plug and play but room to PLAY a bit with VLANs, Firewall, Routing, PoE, etc. Any suggestions?

[SImoHayha]

Really you just wanna buy old Decommissioned network equipment. Most common equipment you can buy is old cisco equipment ebay is common place to buy. Or you can find a used PC recycle place.

Or you can go cheaper router, going with unmanaged Switches, that just connect to Routers and what not.

Remember old network equipment uses a bit of juice, so keep an eye on the wattage usage.

[Gorgon]

54 minutes ago, Simperson said:

I'm about to embark on making an actual network for my house beyond the simple all in one router (carrier provided) plus switch for extra ports. I'm not a network professional by any means but being an IT profession in general I've had to deal with networking plenty of times to know more than the basics. I see LTT using a lot of Ubiquiti equipment but not sure I want to go that route. I'm looking for something relatively plug and play but room to PLAY a bit with VLANs, Firewall, Routing, PoE, etc. Any suggestions?

Personally, I use Cisco SG-200 Small Business switches from many years ago. Inexpensive, only gigabit but manageable through a Web GUI and VLANs and lots of other options. These days I'd likely be looking at MicroTik.

[QuantumRand]

Be careful with second hand Cisco equipment. They've since changed their licensing policies such that you're required to purchase a new license from them to be able to use some of their second hand equipment. Per Cisco:

Quote

If you purchase used or secondary-market Cisco equipment, you must acquire a new license from Cisco before the software can be used.

 

MicroTik or Netgate probably the safer options these days if you're looking for something off-the-shelf but still with plenty of flexibility. Another option is to roll your own router/firewall by throwing pfSesne or OPNsense on something like this, though the initial setup is much more involved.

[LIGISTX]

10 hours ago, Simperson said:

I'm about to embark on making an actual network for my house beyond the simple all in one router (carrier provided) plus switch for extra ports. I'm not a network professional by any means but being an IT profession in general I've had to deal with networking plenty of times to know more than the basics. I see LTT using a lot of Ubiquiti equipment but not sure I want to go that route. I'm looking for something relatively plug and play but room to PLAY a bit with VLANs, Firewall, Routing, PoE, etc. Any suggestions?

You need to figure out what router/firewall you want to use, and what switches/AP’s you want to use. 
 

Personally I run pfsense, and then use UniFi switches and AP’s. The new dream machine from UniFi is actually a pretty compelling solution unlike their older ones, so sticking entirely to UniFi may be a good solution for something just trying to learn a bit; it’ll be more then powerful enough to let you do whatever you want.

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

10 hours ago, SImoHayha said:

Really you just wanna buy old Decommissioned network equipment

[...]

Remember old network equipment uses a bit of juice, so keep an eye on the wattage usage.

Read the datasheet before buying it:

For example an decommissioned 96 port 10gbit core switch can consume upwards of 250W.

Managed L2 switches can range from 5W to 30W. Generally: Don't buy decommissioned 10gbit switches. Most of them have very high power consumption.

 

10 hours ago, Simperson said:

I'm looking for something relatively plug and play but room to PLAY a bit with VLANs, Firewall, Routing, PoE, etc. Any suggestions?

Used 1gbit/s managed L2 switches (24 ports, no POE are $20-30). this allows you to play with VLAN, link aggregation, etc.

The other part is an Intel N100 mini-PC/router with multiple i225 network chips (roughly $200 from China). As software run OpenSense or PFsense.

For wifi buy a Router that can be flashed with OpenWRT. 

Forth component will be some miniPC/server with Proxmox that runs a VM for an RADIUS-server.