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TheLegendary87

New Around Here
I'm moving into a house from an apartment and need to account for the extra size and the physical distance between devices. As such, I have a couple minor challenges I need to account for and am looking for recommendations on doing so.

The internet line and modem are located in the office. My main router is an Asus RT-AX88U. The issue I'm attempting to solve for is physically connecting a bunch of media consumption devices which are all located on the opposite side of the house. At the moment I plan to run an ethernet cable all the way to the other end and connect it to a switch that has enough ports.

My question is this: is it worthwhile/possible to utilize my router's LAN aggregation to run two 1Gbps lines to a switch that can do the LAN aggregation? In addition to connecting all of the media consumption devices to this switch, I may also want to connect another AP given that this is at the opposite end of the house. If this is worthwhile/possible, what kind of switch would I be looking for?

Thanks in advance.
 
Are you running the cable in the walls ? Common suggestion is to run two CAT6 mostly for redundancy if something goes wrong with one cable. For short distances in a house this should be adequate for up to 10Gbit/s. If you have someone do it, make sure they bandwidth test and certify the terminated cable if you go for the higher link rates.

Since these are all "consumers" at the other end, each would likely only use up to 50 Mbits/sec if streaming compressed video from the internet. Your router WAN-LAN rate may be the real bottleneck. If you are talking local traffic only from a media server, then LAG only helps if 1) all devices in the path support, and 2) there are many users at the same time (like an internet server) trying to access the single device. Usually home setups would not benefit from LAG.

What is your ISP service Down/Up ?

If you are buying a switch, look into one with 10Gbit/s ports, at least a few, that will also adjust to link rates of 1, 2.5, 5, and 10 Gbits/sec. to match future router and other device port capability. Otherwise a switch with 1Gbit/sec ports without LAG would be fine for your current stated usage. Above are un-managed switches. If you need to isolate traffic, then look for a managed switch that supports VLANs. Your router may also have to support VLANs so that may push you away from ASUS.
 

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