Help with New Home Network Setup

[wsume99]

I recently moved into a new house and I am looking for some resources to help me learn about upgrading my home network to accommodate everything I want to do. I am specifically looking for information about network segregation and how to properly isolate things. I currently have a very basic setup - router, switch, and wireless AP - with all devices in my home on the same network. I am planning to dive into home automation and I am pretty sure I want to isolate all that stuff onto it's own network. I also want to create a guest wifi network for any visitors. I am not afraid to do research and I want to learn. I did some quick searches and the information is all over the map from many different sources. All I really want is for someone to point me to a good source where I can read and learn.

 

I can provide more details if anyone would like to know but I don't want to suck up people's time with a bunch more noobish questions, unless you are game.

[Bjonness406]

Take a look at the Ubiquiti products, what about an Edgerouter and a Unifi AP?

[wsume99]

Lol, I have some ubiquiti hardware and was just reading some info on their site about VLANs.

 

I currently have a 5 port EdgeRouter X in my network. I have a couple of the Unifi-AC-PRO APs and a cloud key that I plan to hopefully get up and running tonight. I have been waiting for about 6-7 weeks to get internet service at my house and it was supposed to be installed this morning. So assuming it was successful I will be getting them hooked up tonight. I didn't want to try setting them up with no internet access.

 

The switch I have is a Cisco SG102-24-NA switch. I am currently trying to figure out if it supports VLANs.

 

edit- Yeah the cisco switch is unmanaged so I if I wanted to do VLANs I would need to by a switch that supported them or buy more unmanaged switches. I actually have a couple d-link 8-port switches lying around but I think that having separate switches would kind of defeat the whole purpose of having VLANs.

[Bjonness406]

Take a look at Edgeswitch?

[wsume99]

Yep, already there. I looked at them a while back but opted for the unmanaged cisco switch that I currently have. Poor decision on my part but at the time I was not even considering home automation and was not really concerned about network segregation. I am now trying to decide between the edgeswitch lite, edgeswitch, or the unifi switch. I see the differences between the 2 edgeswitches - lite does not have PoE - but I am trying to figure out what the difference is between the edgeswitch and the unifi switch. Best I can tell the unifi switch uses their software to configure/manage the switch whereas the standard edgeswitch uses a the traditional CLI or device hosted GUI. Both have basically the same functionality and are essentially the same price on Amazon. The only real con to the unif switch I can see is that it requires the unifi s/w be hosted somewhere on the network but I will have a cloud key on my network already to control my APs so it could also control the unfi switch. The edgeswitch would be able to operate without the unifi s/w so if I ever decided to ditch the unifi APs I could still run an edgeswitch without needing to host the unifi s/w. The edgeswitch lite is about 1/2 the cost of the other 2 switches and I already have invested in a 6 port POE injector so I don't think having a POE switch is worth the extra $190. Any thoughts?

[al_uk]

I use a MikroTik router and Wi-Fi products to do as you describe. Connected to a managed switch.

[Bjonness406]

Yep, already there. I looked at them a while back but opted for the unmanaged cisco switch that I currently have. Poor decision on my part but at the time I was not even considering home automation and was not really concerned about network segregation. I am now trying to decide between the edgeswitch lite, edgeswitch, or the unifi switch. I see the differences between the 2 edgeswitches - lite does not have PoE - but I am trying to figure out what the difference is between the edgeswitch and the unifi switch. Best I can tell the unifi switch uses their software to configure/manage the switch whereas the standard edgeswitch uses a the traditional CLI or device hosted GUI. Both have basically the same functionality and are essentially the same price on Amazon. The only real con to the unif switch I can see is that it requires the unifi s/w be hosted somewhere on the network but I will have a cloud key on my network already to control my APs so it could also control the unfi switch. The edgeswitch would be able to operate without the unifi s/w so if I ever decided to ditch the unifi APs I could still run an edgeswitch without needing to host the unifi s/w. The edgeswitch lite is about 1/2 the cost of the other 2 switches and I already have invested in a 6 port POE injector so I don't think having a POE switch is worth the extra $190. Any thoughts?

I went with a Edgeswitch 16poe myself since I wanted Poe, and I did not want a white swich in my rack cabinet. I also like it better to be able just just login to the switch, instead of needing to have a UniFi controller running to be able to access it. Makes first time setup easier, and a bonus not relying on a controller

So I have a Edgerouter, Edgeswitch and a HP "dumb" switch, for data outlets in the house. A 48 port managed switch is so expensive, and going this route makes me able to upgrade to 10Gbit on my outlets easy. I just need to change out the HP switch, and then I have 10Gbit on my data outlets (I don't need 10Gbit to my unifi product, or uplink - Yet....)

http://i.imgur.com/pxf9mmR.jpg[/img]