Single or Dual Switches for Home Setup

[Magwezie]

I am looking at the hardware requirements for my new Network. I have pretty much decided to go down the Ubiquiti Unifi Path.

I have realised that my original plan of a 24 port switch will not provide me enough ports (short by 3) for everything to be patched.

So I now I wonder what option should I choose and what are the advantages and disadvantages of them

Option 1
Go all out and get a 48 port switch. Not thinking this is needed

Option 2
Get a small UniFi 8 Port switch to top up the ports. This would mean I could get away with the24 ports and get a smal 8 port when the time comes

Option 3
Get 2 x 16 port UniFi Switches.
This could be the best solution, I believe these are less audible than the 24 port switches. Although it will be housed in a cabinet, I would like to keep noise and heat to a minimum.

Any and all thoughts welcome


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[System Error Message]

If you are housing them in cabinets than the fans shouldnt be a bother. Unlike what you think the fans actually help with the heat.

Single central switch means efficient switching and less bottlenecks. Using multiple switches adds to the bottlenecks and wasted processing power however some switches (not ubiquiti) support high bandwidth stacking that allows multiple switches to be combined into 1 big switch.

If you decide to use multiple switches you will need RSTP at least with LACP. Multiple switches means more efficient cabling if your devices are all over the place.

 

[abailey]

Is this for a home or office network? Do you have a large number of POE devices? Just wondering as the Unifi switches are expensive because they are all POE. Do you have a budget you are trying to stay within?

 

[Magwezie]

This is for a home setup. I am wondering whether I might be over cooking what is actually needed.
I was trying to keep it all in the one family of products (Ubiquiti Unifi). I was thinking that I could have one place to manage the network But I guess in the interest of cost I could go a NON POE Switch (EdgeMax) and use injectors to provide the POE.
Alternatively I could go just a Standard EdgeMax switch (non POE) and get a small 8 port POE Unifi Switch to provide the POE to the devices.
So I was going for

• Ubiquiti Unifi Router (possibly)
  
• Ubiquiti Unifi Switch
• Unifi AP's
• Unifi Cameras

At this stage I was looking at 4 x External POE Cameras and Up to 3 POE Access points.

 

[sfx2000]

Just an observation - are you sure you need all those ports? With some thoughtful consideration, you might not - consider the use case below;

Typically in most home networks - we look at the number of people in the house - and then we take that number and multiple it by 1.5, considering that they might have two clients that are personal usage for them.

Once that's done, we take that number, and multiple it by 1.25 to account for common devices, like Set Top boxes...

This is a rough rule of thumb, but generally works - here at Casa de SFX - we have two people, so we consider 3 "ports" (not physical yet) per person, as most have a laptop/desktop and a smartphone (or tablet) - so that's 6 ports there... add three more for the work laptop and phone, that 9...

Then we consider common devices, which I have, DTV takes one, Android IP TV box takes one, and an AppleTV in the bedroom so I can fall asleep to Netflix - so that's three additional...

we're at twelve... and the mix here is about 70/30 - 70 percent wireless, and 30 percent wired... and when I look at connectivity, it's pretty valid actually (I'm not making up numbers here to fit my network, instead, I'm looking at my network to see if it fits the numbers).

As such... my network is probably not the "norm"... but I still get by with 16 ports (or less)

So I'm a bit overbuilt - I've got two 8 port switches - one is needed as my router basically is using a WAN and LAN port only, and it dumps into an 8 port managed switch - that switch handles the major traffic inside my LAN - which is my desktop, my NAS, and two AP's (along with a Windows box and a Linux Lab machine I use for dev) - the two AP's are actually under loaded, but I have this due to area coverage...

From the primary switch - I dump a link into a secondary unmanaged switch, which handles the run over to the AV center via HomePlugs at the moment, and one of those end points is three ethernet drops there (so that's a tertiary switch).

Sounds like a lot of ports - but it's not - remember the 70/30 mix? About 70 percent of the clients are actually wireless, and with 2AP's, coverage there is pretty good...

I do run two VLAN's - the default (which is the trusted side) and VLAN1003, which is the untrusted side, and this is where the DTV provider's gear lives, along with my work laptop, phone, and the WiFi guest network - and this is set in the first managed switch aligned with the routes defined in the router for treatment (network isolation and some QoS treatment as well).

Nice thing is that most, if not all, unmanaged switches these days do honor VLAN tags if present, and there's AP's out there that do the same - even down to binding an SSID to a VLAN tag (some, like Apple Airports, it's undocumented, but known, and they are pretty cheap these days on eBay/Craigslist).

Anyways... hope this helps in your planning...

 

[coxhaus]

If location is not an issue then one switch so all the data is processed in one back plane is best. I would not sell your 24 port switch just add another one. If you are worried about maxing one GIG bandwidth out then put low priority devices on the extra switch. Don't buy 2 16 port switches. They also make 28 port switches. I think my Cisco SG300-28 may have enough ports. You can buy them used on eBay for low dollars if you don't already have a switch.

 

[Magwezie]

Thanks for all the replies. I am thinking the following might be a good solution.
1 x EdgeMax 24 port (non-POE) switch.
This will be the main switch for the network.
1 x 8 Port POE Unifi Switch
this will service the AP and the Cameras.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Samir]

Thanks for all the replies. I am thinking the following might be a good solution.
1 x EdgeMax 24 port (non-POE) switch.
This will be the main switch for the network.
1 x 8 Port POE Unifi Switch
this will service the AP and the Cameras.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

This is what I was going to suggest. POE switches use a lot more power for the poe, and if you don't need 24 poe, don't get one.