TL;DR
I need help choosing a managed switch. My budget is US$150. I estimate about 20 Ethernet ports throughout the house, but most of them will sit unused most of the time. I believe a used enterprise switch with 24 ports is what I need, but I am a noob and probably don't know better. I care about power consumption, but am not too concerned about noise. I am not afraid of the command line, but have no experience with any router OS.
The long story:
I am moving into a new house and looking to upgrade my network infrastructure and security. I am a bit of a noob when it comes to networking, but I'm not afraid of the command line and learning new things.
The house I am moving into will have 2 cat 6a keystone outlets in each room. Additionally, I will run some cables for ceiling mounted access points throughout the house. I estimate a total of 20 keystone outlets in total. I don't expect to use all of those at the same time, but it would be nice to have them connected to the switch at all times so I can just plug a cable in when needed rather than going to the network closet in the laundry room to change switch ports, so I think a 24 port switch would be ideal.
I want to segment my network as follows:
- home network
- home lab
- Android tvs / tv boxes
- printers and iot
- guest network
- work network (I work from home)
I have an Optiplex 3070 SFF (Pentium G5420) that I intend to use as a router, currently looking into opnSense and VyOS. My network connection will be Frontier fiber 1Gbit symmetrical.
My budget is $150. I have been reading a lot online about switch options and have narrowed it down to the following switches:
- Brocade 6450-48P ~$120 on ebay
- Brocade 6610-24P ~$130 on ebay
- Juniper EX3300-24P ~$150 on ebay
- Aruba S2500-24P ~$150 on ebay
The Brocade 6450-24P seems out of budget at the moment, going for more than $200 on ebay.
I want to be conscious of power consumption. The network closet is in the laundry room, so noise is not as much of a concern. I don't need POE at the moment, but the access points will need power, so it's a nice to have. I don't think I need L3 capabilities, but the homelab has been growing over time and I want to be able to access some things across vlans, including Jellyfin media server and my tv boxes. Finally, I don't need SFP+, but I live in Florida and my house is surrounded by trees, so it would be nice to avoid frying all of my network equipment due to lightning strikes. I have not yet purchased the NIC to use on my router, so the switch decision will influence that purchase too.
Any help here is greatly appreciated.
If anyone thinks I'm overdoing this, I'd appreciate you talking some sense into me. I also understand that a single managed switch is a single point of failure, so if there's an option to use 2 switches with less ports to achieve the same goal within my budget of $150, I'm all ears. I'm not opposed to other switch options either, the ones I listed are just the ones that keep coming up on my Google searches.
I need help choosing a managed switch. My budget is US$150. I estimate about 20 Ethernet ports throughout the house, but most of them will sit unused most of the time. I believe a used enterprise switch with 24 ports is what I need, but I am a noob and probably don't know better. I care about power consumption, but am not too concerned about noise. I am not afraid of the command line, but have no experience with any router OS.
The long story:
I am moving into a new house and looking to upgrade my network infrastructure and security. I am a bit of a noob when it comes to networking, but I'm not afraid of the command line and learning new things.
The house I am moving into will have 2 cat 6a keystone outlets in each room. Additionally, I will run some cables for ceiling mounted access points throughout the house. I estimate a total of 20 keystone outlets in total. I don't expect to use all of those at the same time, but it would be nice to have them connected to the switch at all times so I can just plug a cable in when needed rather than going to the network closet in the laundry room to change switch ports, so I think a 24 port switch would be ideal.
I want to segment my network as follows:
- home network
- home lab
- Android tvs / tv boxes
- printers and iot
- guest network
- work network (I work from home)
I have an Optiplex 3070 SFF (Pentium G5420) that I intend to use as a router, currently looking into opnSense and VyOS. My network connection will be Frontier fiber 1Gbit symmetrical.
My budget is $150. I have been reading a lot online about switch options and have narrowed it down to the following switches:
- Brocade 6450-48P ~$120 on ebay
- Brocade 6610-24P ~$130 on ebay
- Juniper EX3300-24P ~$150 on ebay
- Aruba S2500-24P ~$150 on ebay
The Brocade 6450-24P seems out of budget at the moment, going for more than $200 on ebay.
I want to be conscious of power consumption. The network closet is in the laundry room, so noise is not as much of a concern. I don't need POE at the moment, but the access points will need power, so it's a nice to have. I don't think I need L3 capabilities, but the homelab has been growing over time and I want to be able to access some things across vlans, including Jellyfin media server and my tv boxes. Finally, I don't need SFP+, but I live in Florida and my house is surrounded by trees, so it would be nice to avoid frying all of my network equipment due to lightning strikes. I have not yet purchased the NIC to use on my router, so the switch decision will influence that purchase too.
Any help here is greatly appreciated.
If anyone thinks I'm overdoing this, I'd appreciate you talking some sense into me. I also understand that a single managed switch is a single point of failure, so if there's an option to use 2 switches with less ports to achieve the same goal within my budget of $150, I'm all ears. I'm not opposed to other switch options either, the ones I listed are just the ones that keep coming up on my Google searches.