I have most of my electronic stuff in 2 places - living room and family room, with 4 or 5 internet devices each. Living room has 4K TV, AVR, Apple TV 4K, Blu Ray player, Telus STB.
Family room has 4K TV, Apple TV 4K, Telus PVR, desktop computer, older backup computer. Only the Telus PVR is using a wired network connection, the other devices are using Wi-Fi and I want to put a network switch in this room to get everything off Wi-Fi. The wi-fi works OK with very few issues but wired connections should be faster and more reliable, and more secure I guess.
Usually only 1 or 2 devices are using significant internet data at once, such as a TV and a computer, plus on Wi-Fi maybe an iPhone or iPad.
Already have the living room stuff all on wired network from an unmanaged 8 port 100 Mbit switch from https://www.primecables.ca . Even though this switch is not a Gbit model, it works without problems (except maybe Airplaying from iPhone to Apple TV), and I can watch 4K videos from the Apple TV or the TV internal Android apps.
Internet source is Telus fibre fed to a Telus "Hub" in a central closet. The hub has 4 wired network ports. Currently one port feeds the living room switch, and another port feeds the Telus PVR in the family room. I only have 27 Mbit download rate and this seems enough, could easily get faster speed by account upgrade for extra cost. Don't really need Gbit capability from the switch yet, but why not since not much extra cost.
I'm leaning towards the Netgear DGS308E managed switch. However, is this device maybe too complex and too easy to get into trouble with, by messing up the network setup? Comments indicate it has features that make it easy to spot a bad network cable or device, and you can monitor and adjust the data rates for each port.
Picture of current network wiring: want to add a switch to family room and maybe upgrade the living room switch to 1 Gb:
There is absolutely zero reason to get a managed switch if you are using it at home.
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The main difference between a managed and an un-managed switch is "tagging".
A managed switch will allow you to "tag" packets based upon which port on the switch they come in from. This can be combined with a cheap PC running pfSense to segregate and apply Firewall Rules to the traffic.
So you could have it say that devices on ports 5-8 can only access Internet and not your local network. Or like some of your devices are only allowed to talk to one server on your local network and nowhere else
sexyj wrote: ↑
There is absolutely zero reason to get a managed switch if you are using it at home.
vlan tagging.
for example recently its become very desired to run a single port sbc router to a switch and tag one port for a wan. Its very common now since rpi4's are being used a routers. The best bang for buck solution for upto 500 mbps isp package for full sqm_cake traffic shaping and pihole etc. Probably could even run omada controller in docker too off a single core alone.
Your Telus Hub probably has no vlan support, so you would need to first buy a router that supports using vlans, before you can benefit from a managed switch.
Given the devices in your diagram, all the devices in the living room are smart devices (tvs and media devices) that you would probably have on the same vlan anyways, so an unmanaged switch is sufficient in this spot. In the family room, you could use two unmanaged switches; one for the smart devices using the same vlan as the living room, and another for the two computers on a different vlan to isolate them from the smart devices. So, on the router, you would set ports 1 and 2 to say vlan2 going to two unmanaged switches for smart devices, and port 3 set to vlan3 going to the unmanaged switch for the computers. Every port on each unmanaged switch would belong to the same vlan set at the router port.
In your case, you would only need a managed switch if you wanted to further segment your devices into more vlans to isolate them from each other than what I described above.
Given the price of the Netgear GS308E is only $10 more, this could be cheaper than getting two unmanaged switches for the family room to separate the smart devices from the computer onto two vlans. In this case, you would set the port at the router to use both vlans and then set the appropriate vlan on each port on the managed switch. This model is the basic managed plus switch, which has less features than the managed pro series, which has less features than a fully managed switches, but is what most are looking for in these home scenarios where you want to isolate smart devices from the rest of the network and/or the internet, provided that you have a router that supports vlans.
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I would just spend the money on a managed switch and never touch any settings or even login to it, unless you need to do something more advanced. It really depends on how much you want to geek out. In the past I ran two separate networks in the house, one was the basic telus network for all my PVRs, and a second secure network behind a PfSense and all that. Not too long ago I decided to get rid of most of it and now just run on a simple setup. I work in IT and complex IT environments can stay at work, at home I don't need any of this additional complexity. So while VLANs themselves are pretty easy, for the most part there is very little use for them for like 99% of home users, but if it's only $10 more then why not give you that option to play around if you want to.
Well I guess I don’t really need a managed switch, but yes if it’s only a little extra, maybe…could be interesting and useful.
On the other hand I spotted a deal on a TP-Link unmanaged 8 port gigabit switch for only $22.99 at BestBuy. It has all the lights on the front and all cables on back, so it’s good for a media centre shelf as pointed out above by “lead”.
The catch is these $$22.99 switches are not at the stores and not deliverable to store free, so you need to have it delivered for about $13 shipping fee. However if you order 2, there is free shipping over $35 total order amount. And I guess I could get 2.
Question: if I add a gigabit switch to my family room and feed it with the network cable from the Telus hub that currently goes to the PVR, will my maximum network speed be only 100 Mbit because of the 100 Mbit switch in the living room?
eblend wrote: ↑
I would just spend the money on a managed switch and never touch any settings or even login to it, unless you need to do something more advanced. It really depends on how much you want to geek out. In the past I ran two separate networks in the house, one was the basic telus network for all my PVRs, and a second secure network behind a PfSense and all that. Not too long ago I decided to get rid of most of it and now just run on a simple setup. I work in IT and complex IT environments can stay at work, at home I don't need any of this additional complexity. So while VLANs themselves are pretty easy, for the most part there is very little use for them for like 99% of home users, but if it's only $10 more then why not give you that option to play around if you want to.
I run VLANs at home to keep my work computer, my home computer, and my IOT stuff isolated from each other. I configured all of that on my router though, and just use an unmanaged switch attached to the IOT port for anything I need to add. A lot of new devices are moving to wifi-only these days (Macbooks, Ipads, consoles, etc), so home uses for switches in general is limited these days.
adams7 wrote: ↑
Question: if I add a gigabit switch to my family room and feed it with the network cable from the Telus hub that currently goes to the PVR, will my maximum network speed be only 100 Mbit because of the 100 Mbit switch in the living room?
Only devices connected to that switch will be limited to 100. Replace it with that inexpensive switch you found.
Piro21 wrote: ↑
I run VLANs at home to keep my work computer, my home computer, and my IOT stuff isolated from each other. I configured all of that on my router though, and just use an unmanaged switch attached to the IOT port for anything I need to add. A lot of new devices are moving to wifi-only these days (Macbooks, Ipads, consoles, etc), so home uses for switches in general is limited these days.
Yah, totally cool. I just recently ripped everything out in my place, hell running on Telus wifi even, been pretty good. I'm selling this house and self building a new house starting in a few months, didn't want to have a complex home network that my wife couldn't figure out if something went wrong while I am building, so simplified it as much as possible. Also complex home network/server environment is NOT recommended if you use it for daily stuff...as I found out a while back while on a 21 day hike in Nepal......I had to dial in from the middle of nowhere in the Himalayas, on 28k modem....to RDP to my house and enable telus Wifi as a backup network......50 min later and $15 in internet fees...i was able to click the button and enable. I wouldn't wish that RDP experience on anyone haha.
Yep, keep running VLANs at your house so you can get street cred on how techy you are...
wally_walrus wrote: ↑
Lol... That just proves how ignorant you are
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I was planning on doing the same thing; that is using VLANs to isolate sections of my home network. I think that would be the main benefit of using a managed switch. I'm not sure if IPTV uses multicast traffic, but I'd imagine a switch capable of doing IGMP snooping would be beneficial as well.
I myself am also currently running an unmanaged switch, and was considering getting a managed switch (hopefully a 2.5gb or 5gb capable one as well).
I am using an ER-4 as my router, which has been configured with 1 WAN port and 1 LAN port that feeds into the switch. I'm thinking of using the third port as an isolated internet only port for my work setup which has been isolated to a single port. Might not need a managed switch in my case.
For the OP, a managed switch will offer some possibilities, I honestly think it is worth springing for it now while you plan on making the investment. I bought an unmanaged switch and I kind of wish I sprung for a managed one now.
Depending on the switch type, they are becoming quite difficult to find in stock.
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