Hi everyone,
I’m not sure if this is the right community, but the home networking magazines seem to be pretty dead. I’m a bit green with regard to networking, and am looking for help to see if the plan I’ve come up with will work.
The main image in the post is my current network setup. Basically the ISP modem/router is just a pass through and the 10 Gb port is connected to my Asus router, which has the DHCP server activated. All of my devices, home lab and smart home devices are connected to the Asus router via either Wifi or Ethernet. This works well, but I have many neighbours close by, and with my 30+ wifi devices, I think things aren’t working as well as they could be. I guess you could say one of my main motivations to start messing with this is to clean it up and move all possible devices to Ethernet.
The planned new setup is as follows, but I’m not sure if it’s even possible to function this way.
https://i.postimg.cc/7YftSFt6/IMG-9281.jpg
ISP modem/router > 2.5 Gb unmanaged switch > 2.5 Gb capable devices (NAS, hypervisor, PCs) will connect directly here, along with a 1 Gb managed switch to handle the DHCP > Asus router would connect to the managed switch to provide wifi, and remaining wired devices will all connect to the managed switch as well.
Any assistance would be appreciated! Thanks!
Edit: fixed second image url
proper access points support 30+ clients without any problem (I doubt that the advertised number of 300 clients holds up for unifi aps, but 30 is definitely not a problem), especially for low traffic clients like iot devices.
why op gives up 2gbps from his 3gbps line is a mystery to me though…
Technically they can handle 300 clients, if none of them are talking. With any wireless communication, only one device can talk at a time, maybe two if sending and receiving works on different frequency, which WIFI is not. So no matter what manufacturer says, on 2.4GHz, fewer clients can talk because bandwidth is lower and sending/receiving packets takes time. Whenever possible, stay away from WIFI. The more you use it, the worse it will get.
This is my understanding as well, and why I prefer to get away from wifi for any device that can be wired. My neighbourhood has houses so close I could shake hands with my neighbours through a window, and they all have lots of wifi devices, so interference is inevitable.
Purely technically speaking you can fit all of wireless bands into a single fiber optic and have room to spare. Then you can run fiber in parallel. Wireless will always be a convenience thing for small portable devices which can’t have connectors. Technology is advancing on this front, but it’s reducing range all the time to keep the whole thing usable.
The 3Gbps line is new to me, just upgraded from 1.5 as it was only $5 more per month, so I’m looking at how to actually utilize this now, not actively “giving up” 2Gbps 🙂. I also didn’t have any devices that could take advantage of it until some upgrades, so here we are.