Wired only network advice

[ewitte]

What are your actual speeds?  I have 1Gbit/1Gbit internet, but it is overprovisioned for 1.5Gbit/1.5Gbit. I have most wired data heavy devices running 2.5Gbit.  I had 10Gbit for a while, but I prefer to just have extra NVME space and keep copies on multiple machines.  Considering my Synology only reads/writes at 300MB/s.

[Donut417]

On 2/10/2025 at 3:43 PM, OrdinaryPhil said:

They tend to use older dual or quad core ARM CPUs that are easily overwhelmed by the clunky integrated OS and "tools" that are running by default.

They work fine for slower connections. But when you start getting in to Gigabit and Beyond you do need more power. Thats when you have to look at Prosumer/Enterprise gear OR build your own router with something like OpenSense. 

 

When looking at routers you need to look at the WAN to LAN and LAN to WAN throuputs, thats basically how fast the router can do NAT. Most consumer grade products dont include these numbers in the specs sheets. 

[Blue4130]

On 2/11/2025 at 12:53 AM, OrdinaryPhil said:

I am fortunate enough to have a 1GB fiber plan, and while not every connected device will use that speed (doorbell, cameras, AppleTVs, etc) both my gaming PC and work PC do, as well as both of my Wife's PCs. I mention this because most of the option I am finding on Amazon are fairly old and only have 1Gb ports, which would represent a significant bottleneck if I am using that port to feed the connection to 48 devices. Any advice is helpful.

The 1gb link from the switch the the router would not be a bottleneck since you only have 1 gb of internet speed. Even if you had a 10gb link between the switch and router, you would still max out at 1gb combined across all devices (of internet speed - local traffic would be a different story based on the switch LAN stuff/device speeds)

[OrdinaryPhil]

I stated earlier in this thread that I am not a networking engineer I that I make no claim to be anything other than an amateur in this arena.

With that being said, I feel like a need to expound a bit on some of the oversimplification going on. Let me first explain my environment a bit so that this whole thing makes more sense.

I have 3 PCs in my office: A gaming PC, a steaming PC, and an office PC for work-related tasks. I also have an xbox in the office.  My wife has gaming PC as well, and office PC in her office. We have an Apple TV 4K in the bedroom, the living room, and her office. The living room also has an xbox. I also have a PoE doorbell cam, and 8 PoE security cams. We also have a multipurpose server in the network closet. There are a handfull of other devices as well but suffice it to say that there is a constant flow of data across my network. It basically never goes offline.

When I am working or playing in my office, I enjoy background music from the Apple TV, or sometimes just watching old TV shows. My wife is also watching TV while she works, and is frequently on conference calls while remotely connected to her office.

All of this traffic cannot exceed the 1Gbps to and from my ISP.

However - Internal traffic often does exceed 1Gbps. Transferring files between PCs, my wife working on her photo/video editing from the server, Viewing the camera feeds from the security system... these are all internal traffic that never leaves the house, but still need to be managed/handled by the switch & router. Most small or medium business switches specify that can handle 1Gbps, 2.5Gbps, or in my case 3.5Gbps of routing. That's not through any one port, that's a total aggregate of all the data they can route without holding or dropping packets.

Consumer routers simply cannot route that amount of traffic. This is the problem I am having (I think). I need a router that is not being overwhelmed by the traffic in the switch. I've already ordered the Ubiquiti UCG Max on recommendation and given it's specs, I think that resolve the issue, posting that "You only have a 1Gbps package from your ISP" is not only a gross over simplification, it overlooks the actual problem entirely.

[Kilrah]

6 hours ago, OrdinaryPhil said:

these are all internal traffic that never leaves the house, but still need to be managed/handled by the switch & router.

 

6 hours ago, OrdinaryPhil said:

This is the problem I am having (I think). I need a router that is not being overwhelmed by the traffic in the switch.

Again that internal traffic only goes through the switch and never even touches the router. Only what goes to the internet goes through the router, hence that only needs to reliably handle the 1Gbps.

 

Switches can basically always switch all their ports at full speed.

[Blue4130]

6 hours ago, OrdinaryPhil said:

 these are all internal traffic that never leaves the house, but still need to be managed/handled by the ***** router.*****

This part is incorrect. (I edited your line to take out the word switch. The router doesn't affect local traffic. And basically any gigbit switch sold can handle gigabit PER port at the same time.

[LIGISTX]

10 hours ago, OrdinaryPhil said:

my wife working on her photo/video editing from the server,

This is the only potential workload that will impact anything. Everything else should EASILY fit within gigabit networking bounds, because again as others stated, switches can switch gigabit on every single port at once. Obviously if all of that traffic was destined for a single location, that port and that device would then be the bottleneck. But IP cameras will be destined for the NVR, game downloads is destined to steam or Microsoft (out the WAN, which means through the router), music is so negligible it doesn’t matter, viewing camera feeds is a few megabit/second from the NVR to device doing the viewing, and even plex streaming, a full 4k HDR/Atmos bluray is ~80mbps… not even 1/10th of gigabit. Photo editing tho, that can be large bursts, and any slowdown will be felt where most of these other data streams can either be buffered or are so small it won’t be an issue. I run 10 gig networking… and I don’t edit off my server. I store the photos I am working on locally because going over a network stack just isn’t worth the slowdowns. You can do it, and obviously you are doing it, but changing your networking won’t really make this much better. I am on 10 gig fiber from my PC to my TrueNAS NAS, and I still don’t even bother. SSD’s are cheap, I keep a 1TB in my pc simply for recent photos, I back them up immediately to my server, but I only keep 1TB worth of images locally and dump old data as I run out of space, with it of course already living on my server as a backup anyways. 
 

That’s my .02