Home network setup

[heedpantsnow]

I've always believed that home networking components perform best when they are doing just one thing.  For example, an all-in-one modem, router, and wireless AP sucks at doing any of those because it's trying to do them all at the same time.

I believe it's better to have separate modem, router, and wireless AP.  Maybe even a separate switch too.

I'm about to move and have an opportunity to redo my setup.  Should I spend all my money on a single hot-rod device or spread it around on multiple devices?  What say you?

[SpAmRaY]

I say it depends on what you want to do with your network and what sort of devices you'll use with it.

[tp4tissue]

Well. My fios comes into the house via ethernet..  there's a big box on the outside that can do coax and ethernet.. Most families use coax, because they're already wired up for that.

I use ethernet, because **** Coax..

So I just got the ghetto n66u router, and some sstp cat6 running all over the house.. and a ghetto gbe switch

[slip84]

I've always been a fan of multiple points of failure. Most network devices are reliable (my parents still have a functional WRT54G that I bought 10+ years ago before I moved), though if something craps, I want to be able to replace it and replace it somewhat cheaply.

I have mine as: cable modem ($100ish) -> router ($40) - > gigabit switch ($20) -> wired devices

[heedpantsnow]

Yeah, I forgot to post my usage.  Sorry.

ISP will be Brighthouse cable modem.  I can use theirs or I can buy a Motorola one.  I wish I had FIOS, but it's not available in my area.

We stream a ton of 1080p movies from a Plex server to Roku and various tablets around the house.  Said server also runs Bittorrent 24/7 (throttled on a schedule) and is a backup server using Synctoy nightly from computers and then it slowly backs that up to Onedrive.

Right now my thought is I will go with this:
Brighthouse modem (already have)
Older D-Link DIR-825 router (already have)
Gigabit switch (would need to buy)
Ubnt UniFi AP (free from a friend)

Do I need a new hotness router or is this good enough?

[tp4tissue]

If you can get ethernet from the provider, that's best.. because then you have your choice of router..

They may let you do the wiring yourself..  That's what I did..

If you get the coax,  then you might end up stuck with their modem.. which will usually epic suck..

[heedpantsnow]

If you can get ethernet from the provider, that's best.. because then you have your choice of router..

They may let you do the wiring yourself..  That's what I did..

If you get the coax,  then you might end up stuck with their modem.. which will usually epic suck..

The lovely HOA has contracted with Brighthouse to be the only provider in the neighborhood.  It's their cable modem or I buy my own Motorola.  Would there be a big performance difference?

[tp4tissue]

If you can get ethernet from the provider, that's best.. because then you have your choice of router..

They may let you do the wiring yourself..  That's what I did..

If you get the coax,  then you might end up stuck with their modem.. which will usually epic suck..

The lovely HOA has contracted with Brighthouse to be the only provider in the neighborhood.  It's their cable modem or I buy my own Motorola.  Would there be a big performance difference?

um.. well only you can answer that question, which cable modem are they giving out.. LOL

[heedpantsnow]

Ok found a used Motorola modem on CL. Picking it up this morning.

[bueller]

I'm the same - have separate modem, AP and switches around the house. Always had problems when I'd use all in one units but since swapping them all out for individual units I have way less problems.

[heedpantsnow]

I'm the same - have separate modem, AP and switches around the house. Always had problems when I'd use all in one units but since swapping them all out for individual units I have way less problems.

Thanks. This is helpful info.

[XMIT]

I own my own cable modem.

The UNIX philosophy was always to save simple, focused tools that do one thing and do them well. The OP seems to agree with this - and I do as well - with my network setup. Though, at this point, routers, switches, wireless access points, and cable modems are all really software applications running on an ARM or MIPS processor or something like that. I've had great experiences using aftermarket OSes such as OpenWRT.

It kinds of reminds me of the 90s, when one could get an all in one TV, VCR, and DVD player. Those things were awful!

I was very lucky to have Gigabit cable pulled through my house's attic during a recent round of house work. Highly recommended. Punch down tools are cheap, and much cheaper than paying someone else to do it.

[IvanIvanovich]

Indeed... most networking equipment is just ARM/MIPS/??? hardware running a customized linux distro in more cases than not. Some all in ones are totally fine, like the one I have from ZTE which is approaching commercial grade. It does a lot, and seems to do all of it well enough. modem, router, wifi, firewall/intrusion detection, all the basics and some more advanced stuff that isn't common like bonding (adsl/vdsl/3G/WAN (external secondary modem)), voip pbx. If you pay a bit you can get things that aren't horrible for good price second hand from soho/enterprise decommissioned stuff.
As far as router/firewall go, I think it's fun to roll your own too. Grab a low power motherboard/cpu combo with 2-4GB of memory, and pop in a few quad gig-e nics and a wireless N/AC card if you need wifi, select the network oriented distro you like best and off you go. If you buy mostly second hand server grade parts you can assemble some pretty heavy duty router for not much more than you pay for some off the shelf ones.

[heedpantsnow]

I have collected some stuff, will post later.

Quick question though:  took out a phone jack in my house, they just used 2 wires in a network cable as the phone. So is my house already wired for net?  Or do those wires go jack-to-jack?  Anyone know how phones jacks are usually wired?

[FreeCopy]

I have collected some stuff, will post later.

Quick question though:  took out a phone jack in my house, they just used 2 wires in a network cable as the phone. So is my house already wired for net?  Or do those wires go jack-to-jack?  Anyone know how phones jacks are usually wired?

Most likely they used the blue pair. For a phone that is all you need, a single pair. I'll get a picture up in a minute of what they did to my house but all of your wires should go to a box and inside it should all be tied together. At the house I'm in now someone made the effort to wire all the phone locations with a dual setup of coax and cat5e, lucked out on this. I repurposed it for network usage.

Edit: pic

There is quite a bit wrong with this but as I'm still renting I don't want to make too many changes to things. My net feeds off coax, from there I brought the jack out of the same plate and connected it to the router and used that messy phone box as a tie through to connect to the bedroom that's why that jack is in there. The computer room/office was back to back in the wall so I just ran a 7ft patch cord through the wall into the router also. My setup is kind of rigged based on the owners layout. I don't know if anything I'm saying is helping.

[heedpantsnow]

I have collected some stuff, will post later.

Quick question though:  took out a phone jack in my house, they just used 2 wires in a network cable as the phone. So is my house already wired for net?  Or do those wires go jack-to-jack?  Anyone know how phones jacks are usually wired?

Most likely they used the blue pair. For a phone that is all you need, a single pair. I'll get a picture up in a minute of what they did to my house but all of your wires should go to a box and inside it should all be tied together. At the house I'm in now someone made the effort to wire all the phone locations with a dual setup of coax and cat5e, lucked out on this. I repurposed it for network usage.

Edit: pic

There is quite a bit wrong with this but as I'm still renting I don't want to make too many changes to things. My net feeds off coax, from there I brought the jack out of the same plate and connected it to the router and used that messy phone box as a tie through to connect to the bedroom that's why that jack is in there. The computer room/office was back to back in the wall so I just ran a 7ft patch cord through the wall into the router also. My setup is kind of rigged based on the owners layout. I don't know if anything I'm saying is helping.

Show Image

Wow thanks so much. That's what I needed to know. I'll look around the house for a junction box like that; hoping its in the attic and not outside.

[heedpantsnow]

Ok, so here's what I've ended up with:
TP-Link sg-108 switch (new)
Old D-Link Dir-855 router (might replace at some point)
Motorola SB-6141 D3 cable modem ($40 off craigslist)
Ubiquiti UniFi AP (free from buddy)
Ubiquiti UniFi AP-LR ($45 off eBay)

So that will allow me to jack in my server, desktop, Roku, and Honeywell bridge without using wireless. Then the AP's should be able to provide a solid signal all over the house (those AP's bind together to create 1 SSID and no drops when client changes from one to another).

What do you guys think?  Solid plan?

[jwaz]

^ Can't go wrong with that modem or AP. You need more BSD appliances 

I built up a pretty decent home networking setup last year:

Modem: Motorola SB6141
FW: Mini-ITX Embedded system, D2550 Atom IIRC (though I will switch this over to an Alix APU board and use the old HW for Snort or something)
SW: Cisco ProCurve managed 8-port GbE
NAS: Mini-ITX Embedded Avoton board running FreeNAS, RAID-Z w/ 4 drive hot swap
AP: Ubiquiti

My buddy just hooked me up with this super heavy old dell monitor ( only the NAS has IPMI).
For keyboards I have an APC branded G80 or my SSK.

[heedpantsnow]

^ Can't go wrong with that modem or AP. You need more BSD appliances 

I built up a pretty decent home networking setup last year:

Modem: Motorola SB6141
FW: Mini-ITX Embedded system, D2550 Atom IIRC (though I will switch this over to an Alix APU board and use the old HW for Snort or something)
SW: Cisco ProCurve managed 8-port GbE
NAS: Mini-ITX Embedded Avoton board running FreeNAS, RAID-Z w/ 4 drive hot swap
AP: Ubiquiti

My buddy just hooked me up with this super heavy old dell monitor ( only the NAS has IPMI).
For keyboards I have an APC branded G80 or my SSK.

Show Image

I like the sound of that Jwaz.

I finally got mine all set up. Working like a charm. I am strengthened in my opinion that separate components doing one thing each is the way to go.



Have it all at the top of a pegboard in my home office closet. The rest of the pegboard will hold modding, keyboard, photog, and hiking gear (small frequent stuff).


And the AP is installed in the top of our great room. Signal is strong everywhere in the house, back and front yards, garage, and 3-4 houses down each way!  Off of a single UniFi LR AP (returned the 2nd one):

[heedpantsnow]

Thanks for all the help everyone!