Help Needed: 25 Gbit/s Home Network Setup with Ubiquiti (Multi-Floor House, WiFi 7, Init7 Fiber)

[Artyimeus]

Hey everyone,

I'm planning a new home network setup and could really use your advice.

Starting in 2026, I’ll be getting a 25 Gbit/s fiber connection from Init7 here in Switzerland. I currently have a 10 Gbit/s connection, but switched providers since the new one offers 25G for the same installation cost as 10G — and is cheaper overall. I’m planning to fully utilize the 25G speed (yes, really) with a high-performance NAS (Plex, file server), a powerful PC, and other 25G-capable devices.

Here's some context:

• I'm fully sold on Ubiquiti gear and would like to stay in their ecosystem.

• House layout:

  • Ground floor: Living room + kitchen (separate room)

  • 1st floor: 3 bedrooms + 1 bathroom

  • 2nd floor: 1 large bedroom + bathroom

  • Basement: 2 rooms

  • Garden outside

• Wired network: Every room has a Cat6a wall port.

• WiFi coverage: I want an AP in each bedroom, one in the living room, and one in the basement.

• WiFi 7 only — I want this setup to be future-proof.

• The network should seamlessly hand off devices to the nearest AP without speed drops or issues.

• Silent setup preferred, but if noisy, I'm fine putting the loud gear in the basement.

• Rack mounting is possible.

• I’ll run a separate homelab (with its own router) in my bedroom to experiment and test things — but the main home network should be set up once and never touched again.

• I'm okay with 10G internally if 25G isn't viable, but I'd love to use the full 25G if possible.

My biggest goal is a fast, redundant, zero-hassle, low-maintenance network that just works. Any advice on switches, routers, APs, topology, or Ubiquiti gear to go with?

Thanks in advance!

[Electronics Wizardy]

25G is fiber only currently, so you need to run fiber to the devices that run 25G. Unifi has the USW-Pro-Aggregation if you want 25G fiber to devices. 

 

You need a non unifi router to route those speeds, if you want a firewall.

 

Most of those 25G switches are fall from silent. 

 

 

[TLN]

Neteng here.

Ubiquti - that's your problem #1.

Wired network: needs to be fiber. Problem #2.

"I’m planning to fully utilize the 25G speed" - pretty much not happening. Need to explain why?

"I want an AP in each bedroom". - Also bad idea in general.

"Silent setup preferred" - Unlikely to happen with 25G.

And cherry on top: what firewall you gonna use for 25gbps?

 

Any advice on switches, routers, APs, topology, or Ubiquiti gear to go with?

For 10G:

Aruba APs (655 for 6E, 755 for Wifi-7).  655 supports instant, 755 will require cloud management and recurring fees.  I like that Aruba supports mesh (that acts as vlan-aware switch btw)

Switches: There're only a few passive/10g/PoE switches: Aruba 2930f 8G. 6100 12G, Ruckus and one Cisco model. Great for home.

Firewall will be most expensive. I got Palo at home, but I only have 1gbps. Going above that will be either challenging or expensive or both.

 

TLDR: Stick with 10gbe over existing copper, add one AP per floor and one for the outside and call it a day.

 

 

[Lurick]

To piggy-back on @TLN

If you don't care about NGFW stuff you could do 25G with OPNSense or pfSense, but even on your own hardware you're looking at a good $1000-2000+ investment just for a hardware powerful enough to handle processing at that rate. The appliances from OPNsense shop for their 25G appliance you're looking at about $7K

 

25G is fiber only, I doubt we'll ever see 25G RJ45 copper equipment at this point. Even 10G copper RJ45 gets a bit spicy compared to the fiber equivalent and regardless you're not getting silent 25G anything. You can get somewhat quiet for something with a few 25G SFP28 ports but beyond that you're in data center territory which is cooling over noise.

[Artyimeus]

On 5/12/2025 at 9:59 PM, Artyimeus said:

Hey everyone,

I'm planning a new home network setup and could really use your advice.

Starting in 2026, I’ll be getting a 25 Gbit/s fiber connection from Init7 here in Switzerland. I currently have a 10 Gbit/s connection, but switched providers since the new one offers 25G for the same installation cost as 10G — and is cheaper overall. I’m planning to fully utilize the 25G speed (yes, really) with a high-performance NAS (Plex, file server), a powerful PC, and other 25G-capable devices.

Here's some context:

• I'm fully sold on Ubiquiti gear and would like to stay in their ecosystem.

• House layout:

  • Ground floor: Living room + kitchen (separate room)

  • 1st floor: 3 bedrooms + 1 bathroom

  • 2nd floor: 1 large bedroom + bathroom

  • Basement: 2 rooms

  • Garden outside

• Wired network: Every room has a Cat6a wall port.

• WiFi coverage: I want an AP in each bedroom, one in the living room, and one in the basement.

• WiFi 7 only — I want this setup to be future-proof.

• The network should seamlessly hand off devices to the nearest AP without speed drops or issues.

• Silent setup preferred, but if noisy, I'm fine putting the loud gear in the basement.

• Rack mounting is possible.

• I’ll run a separate homelab (with its own router) in my bedroom to experiment and test things — but the main home network should be set up once and never touched again.

• I'm okay with 10G internally if 25G isn't viable, but I'd love to use the full 25G if possible.

My biggest goal is a fast, redundant, zero-hassle, low-maintenance network that just works. Any advice on switches, routers, APs, topology, or Ubiquiti gear to go with?

Thanks in advance!

For all the people saying not possible because of copper and noisyness.

I know that everything above 10gb is fiber. I will install Fiber Wall Sockets in the room where 25GB is needed.

And as i said in my description: Silent would be nice BUT if its loud i can put it in my basement.

And my Budget is unlimited.

[TLN]

8 hours ago, Artyimeus said:

For all the people saying not possible because of copper and noisyness.

I know that everything above 10gb is fiber. I will install Fiber Wall Sockets in the room where 25GB is needed.

And as i said in my description: Silent would be nice BUT if its loud i can put it in my basement.

And my Budget is unlimited.

People usually rethink their requirements quick when read that PA-3410 cost $35k before licenses and runs 14gbps in "mixed" mode and half-that in "threat prevention mode". 

Unfortunately, website that you're browsing might have some budget restraints and can't hand you data faster than few hundred mbps.

[Echothedolpin]

If your budget is unlimited you should hire a professional imho, especially if you want zero hassle and maintenance free at this level. What you’re asking for is professional installation and a service/maintenance contract. Personally, I would not waste my time attempting to maintain a system of that performance and complexity if I had money to trade for what you’re trying to do.

[Blue4130]

I really question why you need to go 25gbit to every spot in the house... Gettting 25 gbit TO the house I understand. Plety of bandwith and speed for many devices, but what kind of PC's do you have that will take advantage of that? You say "high performance NAS and powerful PC" Care to share the specs?

[TLN]

19 hours ago, Echothedolpin said:

 Personally, I would not waste my time attempting to maintain a system of that performance and complexity if I had money to trade for what you’re trying to do.

There's no meaningful difference in configuring 1gbps network vs 100gbps network. We build 3.2TBps POD's right now, you'd be surprised how simple/clean configuration is. 

19 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

I really question why you need to go 25gbit to every spot in the house... Gettting 25 gbit TO the house I understand. Plety of bandwith and speed for many devices, but what kind of PC's do you have that will take advantage of that? You say "high performance NAS and powerful PC" Care to share the specs?

Quite the opposite actually.

Napkin math: single latest M.2 drive (pcie 5.0, 4x) does around 12-14Gbps read/write, that's 100gbps already. PCIe 4.0 does half that (7GBps or 50gbps network). Multiple drives into one system. 100 Gig card (Mellanox 5) cost like ~$300. 25gig card (mellanox) cost less than $100: https://www.newegg.com/p/14U-00ZU-000X2 It's also pcie 3.0, so you can plug it into decade old system (Xeon 2600 anyone?) and get that performance.

 

Now.... to transfer 1Tb of data over 10Gbe network it takes 15 minutes. Over 25gbe network it takes 5 min (yep, stuff doesn't scale well). So... 10Tb in about an hour. You'd need some beefy storage for that

 

I can come up with some use-cases for fast networking at home (VMs stored on NFS), but people who play with that usually know all the above. And don't use Ubiquity at home

 

On the other hand it's be pretty damn hard to saturate 10gbps link from your provider, and if you do that on residential connection, you'd get a call from ISP pretty quick.

[Sima01]

On 5/13/2025 at 12:39 AM, TLN said:

Neteng here.

Ubiquti - that's your problem #1.

Wired network: needs to be fiber. Problem #2.

"I’m planning to fully utilize the 25G speed" - pretty much not happening. Need to explain why?

"I want an AP in each bedroom". - Also bad idea in general.

"Silent setup preferred" - Unlikely to happen with 25G.

And cherry on top: what firewall you gonna use for 25gbps?

 

Any advice on switches, routers, APs, topology, or Ubiquiti gear to go with?

For 10G:

Aruba APs (655 for 6E, 755 for Wifi-7).  655 supports instant, 755 will require cloud management and recurring fees.  I like that Aruba supports mesh (that acts as vlan-aware switch btw)

Switches: There're only a few passive/10g/PoE switches: Aruba 2930f 8G. 6100 12G, Ruckus and one Cisco model. Great for home.

Firewall will be most expensive. I got Palo at home, but I only have 1gbps. Going above that will be either challenging or expensive or both.

 

TLDR: Stick with 10gbe over existing copper, add one AP per floor and one for the outside and call it a day.

 

 

People get a bit confused about that kind of requirements for home use, but lets put that aside, it is a weird request from a person who is not capable of doing that themselves since most of the people having that kind of equipment are the people who work with similar in their professional life.

Funny thing about his request " fast, redundant, zero-hassle, low-maintenance network " and  " I’ll run a separate homelab (with its own router) in my bedroom to experiment and test things — but the main home network should be set up once and never touched again." 

He will come to the "Core equipment" in a day or two, trust me on that one, they always do. 

His request is full on small project for junior network engineer + 1 tech and + 1 electrician

But at the end of the day, I doubt Ubiquiti is hassle free, its like fortigates (god forbid HA cluster after updates...), they always brake and give you issues, closest to hassle free I got is Meraki lineup. AP-s die from time to time, but everything else holds up just fine in 100+ offices that reach 1-5Gbit/s on any given moment of the day. We tested some Aruba AP's they are fine.

 

[TLN]

53 minutes ago, Sima01 said:

He will come to the "Core equipment" in a day or two, trust me on that one, they always do. 

"What's the network protocol I should run in my home lab?" and "Its a network issue" (it's always DNS)

53 minutes ago, Sima01 said:

His request is full on small project for junior network engineer + 1 tech and + 1 electrician

That looks like one person to me