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Bridges1

Occasional Visitor
60 devices , 3 ring flood cams , 10 Ip cams , smart home devices , 5 computers ,6 smart tvs , cell phones,2 printers, and 4 0r 5 Access points. Will wire as much as possible. The 3 ring flood cams are wireless but om seperate aps. Also have cable Internet.
 
how about one or more level 3 switches to handle most of the local traffic ?
add in an SMB router or high end consumer router. run the wireless off the APs.
use VLANs to segment the lan traffic.
Cisco SG 300 series or equal switch, RV 325 or later, and 371 or later APs ?
 
Missing Internet throughput, what you are currently using as a router and why it is insufficient, plus budget.
 
Jumping the gun a bit before @umarmung's questions are answered, but in general I'd go with discrete components for routing, switching and wifi, SMB-class stuff or better, as @degrub suggested.

For routing, I'd opt for a distro that offers more advanced packet queuing (fq_codel, etc.) and shaping and more CPU horsepower than you'll find in "VPN" routers (Cisco RV, TP-Link TL, etc.). For embedded and ready-to-go, a Ubiquiti ER-4, or for even more throughput, an x86-based Protectli/Qotom box off Amazon running OpenWRT, pfSense or even Untangle or Sophos UTM Home for more built-in UTM.

For switching, Cisco SG is a top value. SG250 for L2. SG350 for L3. They both come in 10, 28 and 52 port models, also with varying PoE levels if you plan on that for your APs. Also consider new or renewed HPE 18__, 19__, 25__ and 29__ series. Netgear and Zyxel are right behind. D-Link, TP-Link and TrendNET are OK for lighter loads and more basic LANs. Whatever you get, make sure it can properly manage your mix of video, IoT and thick client traffic.

Lastly, wifi. QoS applied on the AP is a bone of contention for some, but you likely want something that can at least prioritize low-latency sensitive traffic (video, voice, etc.). My go-to for high-end home setups is Ruckus Unleashed, but I realize that's more costly than many folks are willing to invest. (If they could experience how it worked, I think they'd change their tone, but I digress.) Sometimes I'd do working-pull N-class Ruckus with a controller of eBay. Otherwise for cheap and new, UBNT UniFi is decent and still offers most of the seamless functionality.

Overall, don't be afraid of a mixed-vendor stack. There's no single maker with best-in-class gateway, switching and wireless all under one roof, at least not in the SMB space, IMHO. All the stuff I suggested intermixes really well, and should give you no problems.
 
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Missing Internet throughput, what you are currently using as a router and why it is insufficient, plus budget.

I am using a NETGEAR AC1600 Dual Band Wi-Fi Gigabit Router (R6250) for routing . 3 netgear Rg250 for AP and 1 Linksys WRT 3200ACM for AP . I just added the 3 Ring flood cams and 1 IP cam to the network last week for a total of 13 cams and noticed a slow down . Budget $2000 .
 
Since the cams appear to have been the straw that broke the camel's back, the key question is where is the cam load going ?
Is it out to the internet or across the local lan to a dDVR ?
or ?

would help to have a topology map and the loads and load types.

what was slowing down ? and where in the network ?

No magic, but it is hard to advise without the details.
And you may have to do some testing if it is not obvious where the bottlenecks are.
 
Since the cams appear to have been the straw that broke the camel's back, the key question is where is the cam load going ?
Is it out to the internet or across the local lan to a dDVR ?
or ?

would help to have a topology map and the loads and load types.

what was slowing down ? and where in the network ?

No magic, but it is hard to advise without the details.
And you may have to do some testing if it is not obvious where the bottlenecks are.
Since the cams appear to have been the straw that broke the camel's back, the key question is where is the cam load going ?
Is it out to the internet or across the local lan to a dDVR ?
or ?

would help to have a topology map and the loads and load types.

what was slowing down ? and where in the network ?

No magic, but it is hard to advise without the details.
And you may have to do some testing if it is not obvious where the bottlenecks are.


The 3 Ring flood light cams go to a cloud on the internet .
What tools do I use for testing ?
 
What device and when did you notice the slowing down ?
Where does that fit in the network ?

really need a map showing the layout and at least theoretical loads for each segment.
What other high loads do you have ?

is the load from the ring cams continuous to the internet cloud or only on demand ?

what is the ring stated bandwidth requirement per camera going to the cloud ?

What is your Internet Down/uplink rate ?
 
What device and when did you notice the slowing down ?
Where does that fit in the network ?

really need a map showing the layout and at least theoretical loads for each segment.
What other high loads do you have ?

is the load from the ring cams continuous to the internet cloud or only on demand ?

what is the ring stated bandwidth requirement per camera going to the cloud ?

What is your Internet Down/uplink rate ?

Internet 100/10 Meg
1 to 3 devices streaming youtube and netflix at the same time .
cam is not continuous to cloud only on motion but with 3 rings it can be quite a bit .
 
What do they estimate the needed bandwidth is per camera ?
If your slowdown is only during the cam uploads, then you may be close to saturating either the router or the ISP upload bandwidth on top of your normal upload bandwidth usage.

Do you see buffering issues with netflix and youtube ? Are you running 4k streams ?
I would not think they use much upload, but i expect there is some. I don't use either, so i don't have a feel.

Cable isp shares total capacity over the neighborhood. At peak times, you may see some limitation. Does the issue occur all times of the day or just in the evenings and weekends ?
 
What do they estimate the needed bandwidth is per camera ?
If your slowdown is only during the cam uploads, then you may be close to saturating either the router or the ISP upload bandwidth on top of your normal upload bandwidth usage.

Do you see buffering issues with netflix and youtube ? Are you running 4k streams ?
I would not think they use much upload, but i expect there is some. I don't use either, so i don't have a feel.

Cable isp shares total capacity over the neighborhood. At peak times, you may see some limitation. Does the issue occur all times of the day or just in the evenings and weekends ?

No buffering issues , just takes longer for startup once it starts playing it is ok . Same with web pages takes longer to open . Same on all computers .
Seems to improve late in the evening when most of the family is in bed .
 
And that only started when the rings were added ?

That sounds more like the download speed is saturating , either from the isp or the router.

Netflix indicates 25 Mbit/sec for 4k for just one stream, 5 for HD, and 3 for DVD.

Here is a reference to some tools for testing the download capacity of your system.
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/pictures-story/1172-best-internet-speed-test-tools.html#s1
5 Am speedtest avg is 65/11 meg .
will check different times of day .
 
First priority - protect your Upload
  • With 100/10 Mbps throughput, it looks like you risk saturating your upload.
  • Each ring cam has a recommended requirement of 2 Mbps up and down. The phones will also put pressure on your upload due to iCloud or similar services.
Solution: get a router that provides modern "QoS", the best of which is SQM that uses fq_codel or some variant of Cake AQMs.

Your throughput requirements are low enough that you should be fine with just a Ubiquiti Edgerouter ER-X. However, a Ubiquiti Edgerouter ER-4 would serve you better if you upgrade your Internet to anything less than 400 Mbps.

Second priority - segment your traffic
  • Cameras and many other IoT devices can broadcast traffic and over WiFi can contribute significantly to reduced airtime.
  • IoT devices in general carry significant security risks
Solution: create separate broadcast domains for at least all your cameras, another for servers/NAS/trusted devices and another for everything else. An additional broadcast domain for managing the network devices can also be a good idea. Keep it simple for a home network because many devices talk to each other, including via broadcast. This can most easily be achieved using VLANs.

Ubiquiti Edgerouters,
as recommended above, support VLANs. You should also get at least one main L2 or L3 switch and, if needed, a separate smaller PoE switch, to distribute the VLANs across your devices. The Cisco SG300 series and HP 1810 series are very good options for residential use due to being web-managed, silent, power efficient, featureful and cheap. You will want as many ports as you can get for your main switch (24/28 port versions are popular). You will not be able to get silent, power efficient, large PoE switches, hence the smaller separate PoE recommendation.
 
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If you're willing to spend up to $2K on this buildout, I'd almost consider hiring a pro to handle the install and config for you. But if you're intent on doing this yourself, I'd still stick with discrete, SMB-class components (or better). Do a Ubiquiti ER-X or ER-4 for routing, QoS and traffic shaping. Cisco SG or HPE/Aruba OfficeConnect for switch(es). And since you have the budget, Ruckus Unleashed for wifi; for residential, I usually find a mix of R310's or R510's to be plenty sufficient. Segment your traffic with a few VLANs and you'll have as solid a home network as one could reasonably hope for.
 
You guys are doing a good job.

I believe this is the future as more and more devices become network aware.
 
Thanks to everyone for all the great advice . I am thinking of trying one of the Ubiquiti Routers . Like the Idea of separate Vlans . Time to get on the internet and learn about Ubiquiti .
 

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