Post your network setup

[Custom90gt]

Let's see what you've got in your house.

I've recently got more into networking when I was having issues with Asus mesh setup dropping devices once I got up to ~50 wireless devices in the household. After that I decided to go a different route (actually it was after I watched a Linus Tech video on his new house where he installed way too many Ruckus access points).

 

My setup:

ISP: Xfinity 1.2Gb/s down 40Mb/s up (wish it was faster, I only went with 1.2 down because of the "faster" upload)

Modem: ARRIS SURFboard SB8200 DOCSIS 3.1 (lets me do a LAGG to take advantage of >1Gb/s internet)

Router: Lenovo ThinkCenter M900 with a i5-6500 and 16GB of ram running pfSense (strongly recommend pfSense)

Switch: Brocade 6450 48-port POE switch (can be had for a reasonable price on ebay)

Wireless access point: Ruckus Wireless R720 running Ruckus Unleashed - no contest, the quality of this access point is so much better than my Asus AX11000, no question about it.  The only time this access point gets restarted is when I do a firmware update.

Network cards: HP Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 561T in my desktop and "router," 649281-B21 HP Infiniband 40Gb/s in the server.

Misc: Cat 7 network or SFP passive copper network cables between the modem, router, switch, desktop, and server.  I only wish I could run network cable to every room in the house, but that would involve lots of drywalling.

 

I do have another Ruckus R650 heading my way to take advantage of AX devices.  Not sure if it will entirely replace my R720 or if I'll try out a mesh network with it. 

[Aaron44126]

Internet: AT&T gigabit 1000 (fiber to the home) — it's symmetric, I can hit a speed test with 930 Mbps both ways.

 

Gateway: Using the AT&T-provided gateway box.  I know there are some tricks to get this out of the picture but I have not bothered with that.  It's in passthrough mode, and I was suspicious about it but it has not given me any trouble.

 

Router: I have three Asus RT-AX92U routers that I bought to try in a Wi-Fi mesh configuration.  I ended up being very disappointed with AiMesh performance.  Right now they are set up independently, with one acting as a router and the other two as access points (+ switches), and that has been working pretty well.

 

The Internet, gateway, and primary Asus router all live in an unfinished room in my basement along with a 16-port Cisco gigabit switch.  That switch feeds the rest of the house.

 

About 18 months ago, I took on a project to get Ethernet into every room in the house — one jack in each bedroom, two in the living room, and two in the loft/office.  (This was right after AT&T fiber became available and, working from home, I was unsatisfied with just using it over Wi-Fi.)  I did this just by cutting holes in the drywall the size needed to mount an Ethernet jack, and then through the hole, I used a long drill bit with a 90-degree adapter to drill down through the baseboard.  From there I was able to run fish tape to an unfinished room and pull the Ethernet cable back.  Because I only cut holes where I wanted to put an Ethernet jack, I didn't have to do any drywall patching.

 

My house has a basement, main floor, and upper floor.  Running cables from the main floor to unfinished space in the basement was pretty easy.  For the upper floor, I was able to run cables either to the garage or to a utility room on the main floor and then from there down to the basement.  There was one jack on the upper floor that I had to run behind a wall on the main floor all the way down to the basement.  I put the upper floor jack directly above a main floor jack and used some long drill bit extensions to drill holes through the upper floor baseboard and the main floor ceiling board (all behind the wall) and then I was able to run the cable down to the basement through the same hole I made for the main floor jack.  In the end, you can only an "exposed" Ethernet cable in the garage and in the basement, everywhere else I managed to hide them in the walls, ceiling, or unfinished spaces; I am really pleased with how it turned out.

 

So, the other two Asus routers are placed in different parts of the house for maximum 5 GHz Wi-Fi coverage with an Ethernet backhaul.  I have a switch in the living room for stuff connected to the TV, and a switch in the office which has a couple of laptops and printers connected to it.

Because there is Ethernet everywhere, I don't actually use the Wi-Fi that much; just for a pair of phones and a pair of iPads, and occasionally a laptop if someone is using it in a spot that is not near an Ethernet jack.  (And visitors, I guess.)

 

My "server" lives with network equipment in the basement and it is just a spare laptop with a 512GB NVMe system drive and 8TB SATA SSD data drive, and a 6TB USB HDD which holds backup images of other systems in the house.  Backups run at night and can take a few hours even with a gigabit wired between client and server.  I'm abusing Carbonite's "unlimited backup" service to keep backups of everything on my "server" in the cloud.  (Thankful that AT&T doesn't have a data cap for this plan.  I hit 3-4 TB of data transferred per month.)

 

I don't have any 10-gigabit connections yet.  None of my switches or PCs can accommodate it.  I think the cabling can handle it so I can look into upgrading down the line.

[duskw4lker]

I think I must be the laziest IT ever, because I barely have a Mitrastar HGU, the usual stuff that bundles switching, AP, routing, firewall, etc. and to cover the second floor a D-Link DAP 1325 repeater to extend the BSSID from the first floor.

 

But! I have on my sights a couple of powerline adapters to have higher bandwidth on the second floor, replacing the DAP-1325. anybody with experience with powerline adapters? any good? yay or nay?

[Aaron44126]

40 minutes ago, duskw4lker said:

But! I have on my sights a couple of powerline adapters to have higher bandwidth on the second floor, replacing the DAP-1325. anybody with experience with powerline adapters? any good? yay or nay?

I looked into this before I ran Ethernet everywhere.  Check to see if there are arc fault circuit breakers where you would like to put the powerline adapters.  These are normal for bedroom power outlets in newer houses, and pretty much my entire upper floor has outlets behind arc fault breakers.  I hear that powerline adapters can cause these to trip randomly, cutting power until you go flip the breaker back on.  (No first-hand experience but I have had other arc fault issues...  It scared me out of buying any powerline adapters.)

[duskw4lker]

21 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

I looked into this before I ran Ethernet everywhere.  Check to see if there are arc fault circuit breakers where you would like to put the powerline adapters.  These are normal for bedroom power outlets in newer houses, and pretty much my entire upper floor has outlets behind arc fault breakers.  I hear that powerline adapters can cause these to trip randomly, cutting power until you go flip the breaker back on.  (No first-hand experience but I have had other arc fault issues...  It scared me out of buying any powerline adapters.)

I read that the adapters have to be within the same circuit and same breaker as a requisite, but from there to randomly tripping the breakers, well that's another story and a quite interesting one. Thanks for the info on possible issues :D.

It would be quite funny though to be trolled by a network device putting a household daily life to a stop 'Honey I can't wash laundry because the powerline adapters threw a fit again, gotta flip the breakers..' like a Malcolm in the Middle episode 

[Aaron44126]

9 minutes ago, duskw4lker said:

I read that the adapters have to be within the same circuit and same breaker as a requisite, but from there to randomly tripping the breakers, well that's another story and a quite interesting one. Thanks for the info on possible issues :D.

Pretty sure I read that they can work between circuits (depending on the “quality” of your electrical wiring) but speed will be reduced a good bit.  (Seems pretty limiting otherwise as a circuit would just cover a room or two, probably adjacent rooms, and you might as well just knock a hole in the wall and put a real Ethernet jack on each side in that case.)

[Custom90gt]

Bear in mind I haven't done much research into it, but have you considered Ethernet of coax? That is if you have coax in the house.  It's about the only thing I've really thought seriously about doing...

Example adapter:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07XYDG7WN/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_8?smid=A2ULKEZ56DP1E0&psc=1

[duskw4lker]

1 hour ago, Custom90gt said:

Bear in mind I haven't done much research into it, but have you considered Ethernet of coax? That is if you have coax in the house.  It's about the only thing I've really thought seriously about doing...

Example adapter:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07XYDG7WN/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_8?smid=A2ULKEZ56DP1E0&psc=1

That is actually brilliant, and I do have unused coax running through the house 😄 😄 😄 really an interesting adapter with this MoCA protocol which I had no previous knowledge of. Thanks!

[Custom90gt]

27 minutes ago, duskw4lker said:

That is actually brilliant, and I do have unused coax running through the house 😄 😄 😄 really an interesting adapter with this MoCA protocol which I had no previous knowledge of. Thanks!

I've heard that it's more reliable than a powerline adapter and has better speeds.  The only bummer is they are more expensive than a powerline adapter and you have to buy a MoCA compatible splitter to ensure that you have the right frequencies available to the adapters.  If my Ruckus wireless setup didn't help with my disconnects on my Fire TV's, I would be ordering those. 

[solidus1983]

Oh god get ready to laugh at mine. So here we go.

ISP: SSE Vodaphone FTTC 50/5 sync on 80/20 Package

Modem: Zytel VMG4005-B50A (VDSL2 with line bonding support)

Router: Linksys WRT32X with my personal custom OpenWRT firmware (Yep i know)

Server: Seed Odyssey x86 8GB, 1.25TB Storage running Proxmox 7.1 running 4 VM's, 1 Windows VM for Driver mods, 1 Linux Container for OpenWRT Compiling, 1 Linux VM for Docker/Portainer which hosts what is in the  screenshots minus Nextcloud and another Linux VM for Nextcloud.

Server runs everything from VPN to Pihole Unbound DNS with DoH and DNSEC, which has a 4 Million block list for Malware, Trojan, Gambling, Adult Content, Crypto Miners, Telemetry.

 

[Samir]

On 2/9/2022 at 2:05 PM, duskw4lker said:

But! I have on my sights a couple of powerline adapters to have higher bandwidth on the second floor, replacing the DAP-1325. anybody with experience with powerline adapters? any good? yay or nay?

Powerline adapters can be a great way to get 100Mbs+ to almost any location.  They're also easy to test out and know if they're going to work--5 minutes and you'll know.  If not, back to the store.  This is a quick and painless Best Buy run. :)

On 2/9/2022 at 2:43 PM, Aaron44126 said:

I looked into this before I ran Ethernet everywhere.  Check to see if there are arc fault circuit breakers where you would like to put the powerline adapters.  These are normal for bedroom power outlets in newer houses, and pretty much my entire upper floor has outlets behind arc fault breakers.  I hear that powerline adapters can cause these to trip randomly, cutting power until you go flip the breaker back on.  (No first-hand experience but I have had other arc fault issues...  It scared me out of buying any powerline adapters.)

Interesting.  I believe I have these breakers at one of my sites, but it seems a particular UPS will trip mine, not the powerline adapters as it only started after I added the UPS and it doesn't happen often at all.

On 2/9/2022 at 3:12 PM, duskw4lker said:

I read that the adapters have to be within the same circuit and same breaker as a requisite, but from there to randomly tripping the breakers, well that's another story and a quite interesting one. Thanks for the info on possible issues :D.

Older ones were more susceptible to issues between panels, but between breakers was hardly an issue.  And today's top-tier speed powerlines run on almost anything pretty well.

On 2/9/2022 at 3:25 PM, Aaron44126 said:

Pretty sure I read that they can work between circuits (depending on the “quality” of your electrical wiring) but speed will be reduced a good bit.  (Seems pretty limiting otherwise as a circuit would just cover a room or two, probably adjacent rooms, and you might as well just knock a hole in the wall and put a real Ethernet jack on each side in that case.)

Powerlines will never be for speed more that it's like a wired connect since it has reduced latency.  But this being said, evaluating powerlines is quick and easy, so they can be the quickest install ever, almost as fast as literally taking a long cable and plugging the two locations together.

On 2/9/2022 at 6:40 PM, duskw4lker said:

That is actually brilliant, and I do have unused coax running through the house 😄 😄 😄 really an interesting adapter with this MoCA protocol which I had no previous knowledge of. Thanks!

Moca is pretty awesome--full ethernet speeds up to 2.5Gb on certain adapters.  Just as painless to install as long as you don't have any issues with the wiring.  For a point-to-point connect, I typically just unplug the two coax cables at the demarc and put a barrel connector between them so then it's just like one long cable.  Moca syncs as fast as powerlines so you'll know in 5 minutes if you did it right or need more work.

On 2/9/2022 at 7:09 PM, Custom90gt said:

I've heard that it's more reliable than a powerline adapter and has better speeds.  The only bummer is they are more expensive than a powerline adapter and you have to buy a MoCA compatible splitter to ensure that you have the right frequencies available to the adapters.  If my Ruckus wireless setup didn't help with my disconnects on my Fire TV's, I would be ordering those. 

I've found moca adapters around the same prices as top end powerlines, so just keep looking.  If you only have a single point to point run, you don't have to worry about the splitter, but if you're doing more, you'll need to make sure the splitter is correct as the moca will need it to hit all the moca adapters. 

My networks are pretty extensive so I'll post them separately.

[Samir]

I have 4 physical locations and 5 isps so I'll just do a summary.

ISP: 800/15,400/400,100/10 and 500/50 and 100/10 both at a single location.  Probably going to add a 1G/1G connection to the 800/15 site.

Modem: Arris sb6190 x2, isp modems at x2, direct ethernet at another so no modem.

Router: various enterprise models capable of IPsec vpn tunnels

Switch: various unmanaged switches and enterprise 'core' switches, largest is an Arista 96-port.

Wireless access point: Not many of these at all--only 2 sites even have them atm as everything else is wired.

Network cards: Mainly 1GB, branded and real Intels or whatever is on the motherboard

Okay so this a lot of network, but it's for business too.  All 4 sites are connected via the IPsec vpn tunnels so they pretty much function like a WAN and anything on any site is accessible from anything on another site (simplification).  Probably over 200 devices in total across all the sites.

So what is all this used for?  Basically to get business data into digital that I can then work on from any of the sites.  Else I would be stuck at just one and be away from the wife that works closer to two other sites.

[Sandy Bridge]

More than 50 wireless devices?  Wow!  That's a lot!

I have 500/50 ISP service; like Custom90gt I upgraded because of the faster upload speed, not the faster download speed.  But my modem, a Zoom model from 2014, is only DOCSIS 3.0, so effectively it's more like 300/50.  I haven't been bothered to upgrade it to increase the download speeds yet, although faster uploads would have been nice in late January.

Router, I have the Asus AC66U.  No complaints.  Triple-antenna for 450 Mbps 802.11n, for my triple-antenna laptop with a Wireless N card.  It also does 802.11ac, for my newer 802.11ac laptop that only has one or two antennas (haven't bothered to memorize it; if I need faster web access on it, I use its Ethernet port).  Mostly wired up with Cat6 cable because Monoprice had a great sale on it in 2020, although none of my devices actually benefit from having Cat6.  Still use Cat5E once in a while, too.  I'd like to upgrade my Ethernet, but I'd have to get cards for both my laptop and my desktop, and a router/switch that supports it, and the cases where it would save a noticeable amount of time are rare enough that it hasn't been worth it.  I see you can get a brand-name USB 2.5 Gbps card for $30 now, I think that's about $10 less than when I checked a year ago, so maybe we're getting there.

I also have Zigbee for my Philips Hue system.  Works pretty well.  I have one non-Philips product on it, but it's still in the Friends of Hue family.  Basically went with Hue/Zigbee because you can run everything locally, no dependencies on the cloud like with Nest themostats, and no qualms about security like with the no-name brands.

I rent, so no major infrastructure projects, just a thin Cat6 cable running along one of the baseboards and another couple behind some furniture.

[Jarhead]

Currently on a symmetric gig-fiber plan with their modem feeding into my Linksys WRT1900ACS router. From there, the home server is hooked into that and sometimes a Synology as well; these primarily run the home's centralized file storage, service containers, etc. Rest of the house is (currently) wireless and has a few Roku boxes set up as well as our laptops/desktops. Despite being wireless and going through a floor / walls / etc, wireless speeds still typically hit 300-500 Mbps bandwidth.

[aivxtla]

The setup I put up at my family home with 1.4 Gbps / 35 Mbps Comcast Xfinity service :

MODEM: Netgear CAX80

ROUTER: SuperMicro AMD EPYC 3251 (55W) System  (pFsense 2.5.2) with an Intel X710-T2L Dual Port 10 Gbe NBase-T card.

AP: Netgear RAX120 & Netgear RAXE500 (phasing out and switching to Orbi AXE)

SWITCH: Zyxel XS1930-10

NAS: Netgear ReadyNAS 524X |

I bought and put together the AMD 1U box hoping to setup a server rack at some point and running VMs along side pFsense for myself and my father on VMWare ESXI but never got to it, so it’s just an overkill router right now lol.

At my apartment I have Verizon Fios 300/300 Plan with an RAXE500. Planning on getting a tiny mini pc / box to run pFsense.

The Netgear stuff was given to me for beta testing and so just accumulated them. That’s the only reason for having high end routers as APs lol.

 

@Custom90gtAre you using pfblockerng and ntopng packages in pfSense? If not, greatly recommend both.

[Samir]

Once you're running pfsense at your apartment, I'd set up a vpn tunnel between your family home and your apartment--it's really cool to have a wan.

[luisxd]

Modem: Sercomm Entry34T

AP: TP-Link Archer C7 AC1750 + DDWRT Custom Firmware

NAS 1: My Cloud Western Digital EX2 Ultra

NAS 2: Custom PC (GA-Z97N-Gaming 5, Intel Pentium G3258, 8GB DDR3) with FreeNAS OS

Currently thinking on replacing both NAS for an Asustor Lockerstor 8 AS6208T, not sure yet.

[Samir]

6 hours ago, luisxd said:

Modem: Sercomm Entry34T

AP: TP-Link Archer C7 AC1750

NAS 1: My Cloud Western Digital EX2 Ultra

NAS 2: Custom PC (GA-Z97N-Gaming 5, Intel Pentium G3258, 8GB DDR3) with FreeNAS OS

Currently thinking on replacing both NAS for an Asustor Lockerstor 8 AS6208T, not sure yet.

Curious--what can the Asustor do that the other two can't?

[luisxd]

On 2/12/2022 at 5:55 PM, Samir said:

Curious--what can the Asustor do that the other two can't?

 

Idk it look like an AIO solution and I found a good deal on it, but I'm not sure yet.

[ratchetnclank]

Virgin Media 1G download 50mbps upload

3 Google Wifi 

1 Netgear 8 port gigabit switch

DS420+ Synology NAS.

Intel Nuc i3 running ubuntu server and kubernetes.

 

Use the NUC for plex,sonarr,radarr,bazarr,grafana,influxdb,sabnzbd,jackett transmission and bitwarden as well as a valheim server. All running in docker on kubernetes with Persistent volumes set up on the NAS and ingress controllers for accessing it all. 

 

The kubernetes setup is a bit overkill since i don't have any plans on running as a multi node cluster but i wanted to learn it so this was the best way. 

[John Ratsey]

My setup is simple compared to many: A Virgin Media 100mbs cable modem is in one corner of the house (so not very good wifi coverage) which is hard-wired to a TP Link Archer A7 router which is located upstairs in the centre of the house (my study) from where there's OK wifi coverage to all corners. There are three wired clients (two printers next to the router plus a powerline adaptor to a Tesla Powerwall battery in the garage) plus 14 wireless clients.

 

The cable between cable modem and router was installed about 20 years ago when wifi was in its infancy and most computers needed a wired connection.

[Aaron44126]

On 3/13/2022 at 10:57 AM, John Ratsey said:

(Tesla Powerwall battery in the garage)

 

Interesting tidbit there; do you have solar panels or is the Powerwall just there for backup purposes?

(We have solar panels but no battery solution; something I'm considering for a few years down the line when our net metering agreement with the power company runs out.)

[John Ratsey]

53 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

Interesting tidbit there; do you have solar panels or is the Powerwall just there for backup purposes?

(We have solar panels but no battery solution; something I'm considering for a few years down the line when our net metering agreement with the power company runs out.)

Both. I first got the solar panels and then quickly realised that the timing of domestic consumption was out of phase with the solar generation so the battery was added once one was available. In UK there's the added benefit of being able to charge the battery with cheap night time electricity. The result is that in the summer half of the year most of the consumption is met by solar generation (direct or via the battery) and during the winter most of the consumption is met by cheap night electricity stored by the battery. You can see the power flows at pvoutput but note that to see the battery data you have to select the right-most blob under the date selector (extended data). This week's good news is that after four years of waiting, Tesla's "intelligent" charging algorithm now appears to be looking at the weather forecast.

[Katja]

I got something super simple for the moment, but it's what was had when I moved here.

ISP: Vodafone ES (from ONO) (300/300)

Router: some old Netgear one that's being replaced after I move.

 

After moving, options will be weighed; more likely than not, if it's available we'll get gigabit through Adamo, otherwise we'll have to search.

 

there's an ISP here in Spain named PepePhone and I want them purely for the name, don't tell anyone

[KLF]

ISP: Telia, 1000/100 upgraded yesterday to 1000/500 for free (ISP is upgrading all gigabit customers to 500mbps upload). 

Router: Asus AC-68U 

Switches: 3x HP 1820-8 

 

Few years back this building was renovated and that included fiber and network inside apartment. Every room except kitchen and bathroom have dual ethernet jacks, I also had them install extra two ethernet jacks in a walk-in closet. Then I bought an Ikea shoe rack, on the bottom shelf is bunch of external drives, top shelf has HP Microserver G8, UPS, Asus router, one HP switch and a Philips HUE box. All this is on the top shelf in that closet.  Second HP switch is in the electrical box next to my door, third one is here in my "office" and I'm going to need a fourth switch at some point in my living room when I do some rearranging there.   

Looking at the speed test, I don't really need to upgrade my trusty old Asus but I would just like to. Things have worked way too smoothly for too many years now.