Managed network switch overkill for home network?

[Jerped]

Hey everyone!

 

I will be moving in an appartment in the next months and will need a better switch to plug all my devices. I have a lot of things to plug, the big amount is for the TV  setup (tv, ps4, steam link, htpc/freeNAS box)

then I have three computers and 1 laptop.

 

I currently have a cheapo 100mbps switch for all of that, but I will need more.

 

The router is a linksys ea6350 smart wifi with 4 gbps ports usable.

 

Do you have any idea for a good networking switch that I will be able to use on the long term?   I'm not familiar in the networking appliances thing, but I do know how to handle a home network

 

Thanks in advance!

[Electronics Wizardy]

a managed switch will only help if you know how to use the functions. Do you know what vlans, teaming, static routes, qos are? If you don't know what those are, then get a normal switch, if you do get a managed switch.

[brwainer]

A 'Managed' switch is pretty overkill, but a 'Smart' switch can be very useful in my experience. Any brand of Smart switch is more or less interchangeable - every brand has people who swear by it, and also people who have had more bad experiences with the brand than others and therefore will avoid them like the plague. I've used pretty much every brand on Amazon.

 

These would probably be overkill because you are unlikely to ever need SFP ports or POE, but the company I work for has deployed thousands of Engenius EGS2110P and Netgear GS110TP. We haven't had significant issues with either one.

 

For home use, I like 8 port switches, unless you know that right off the bat you're going to have 5 or more in use - then I would get a 16 port switch. On the other hand, if right now you only need 1 or 2 ports, then I would just get a unmanaged 5 port switch, and in the future you can buy something bigger and/or nicer.

[Jerped]

29 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

a managed switch will only help if you know how to use the functions. Do you know what vlans, teaming, static routes, qos are? If you don't know what those are, then get a normal switch, if you do get a managed switch.

Haha  yes I do know about networking basics   my initial goal would have been to team two links coming from the router, so that my tv setup would benefit from 2gbps to the router, and than have the PCs connected directly to the router. That would give me 1 full gbps PCs to TV setup, and still have 1gbps for other traffic on the tv setup.

 

27 minutes ago, brwainer said:

-Snip-

Here comes my limit of knowledge   what would be the difference between a "smart" and a "managed" switch?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Jerped said:

my initial goal would have been to team two links coming from the router, so that my tv setup would benefit from 2gbps to the router,

wont' help at all. Your not gonna have internet that fast, and no other traffic would touch the router. Most consumer ones doesn't even suppot lacp

 

 

[Jerped]

My problem is that right now, if my pc does a backup to the FreeNAS box, the link is completely full and I have poor quality with the steam link and ps4. I already know that this problem is caused by the little 100mbps switch in the middle, I just don't want to take a chance.

[Lurick]

Just get a nice unmanaged 8 or 16 port gigabit switchand you'll be fine with that. The bottleneck right now is the 100mbps link between everything. Link aggregation would only help between the freenas box and the switch if you're streaming from it and writing to it at the same time from multiple devices AND assuming the hard drives can handle more than 125MB/s (1Gbps) which generally happens on with RAID in the mix.

[The Benjamins]

It is best to have everything run though a center switch, their backbone speed is usually 1 Gb full duplex (2Gb total) x number of ports. I recommend looking at old/used business/enterprise switch.

I got a old 24 port dell managed switch for under $50

[Jerped]

On 17/04/2017 at 8:02 AM, The Benjamins said:

It is best to have everything run though a center switch, their backbone speed is usually 1 Gb full duplex (2Gb total) x number of ports. I recommend looking at old/used business/enterprise switch.

I got a old 24 port dell managed switch for under $50

Hahahaha searched quickly on Ebay and found an old Dell Powerconnect 2724 24port switch for 50$CAD    that will deal with my problem, on the cheap

[The Benjamins]

7 minutes ago, Jerped said:

Hahahaha searched quickly on Ebay and found an old Dell Powerconnect 2724 24port switch for 50$CAD    that will deal with my problem, on the cheap

ya there are some great deals on 1Gb switches on ebay. I think that is the same model I use right now.

[goodtofufriday]

https://www.netgear.com/business/products/switches/web-managed/GS108E.aspx?cid=wmt_netgear_organic

 

The 8 port ones are nice for something small. https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-ProSAFE-Gigabit-Managed-GS108E-300NAS/dp/B00M1C0186 

 

And there are poe versions too.