[Help me...] Planning a new home network

[The-Ghost]

Basics...

New (to me) house/first time home over, ~900sqdt 2.5bdrm, semi-detached home, 2 levels plus a mostly finished basement. Would like to do wireless and wired networking through out the house. Struggling a bit on what Router/Switch/AP's to choose. Budget is somewhat flexible trying to stay under $1000.00 cad

Current Devices:
Desktop PC (wired)
2 Laptops (wired/wireless)
1 Microsoft Surface Pro (wireless)
BlackBerry z10 (wireless)
PS3 (wired)
Nintendio Wii (wireless)
Smart TV (probably a Visio M series) (wired/wireless)

Planned additions:
At least one VOIP desktop phone
Asterisk PBX
At least 1 wireless VOIP Handset
Storage server
a couple of IP Cameras
Vmware Lab for VCP (C6100 or a stack of boxes)

Im Starting from scratch cable wise, theres nothing there, I plan to do the following:
2 cat6 + 1 rg6 to each bedroom (pulled up the attic, and down the interior walls)
1 cat6 for an AP in the hallway outside the berooms
2-4 cat6 + 1 rg6 for the living room
2-4 cat6 + 1 rg6 for the basement rec room
2 cat6 drops to the dining room
1 Cat6 to the Kitchen

Total = 22 cat6 and 5 rg6 drops


I likely won't be using all of the drops at the same time, but id rather pull more then i need vs crawl into the attic again.

Equipment selection:

Switching: 1x Cisco SG-200-26P (12 POE Ports)
Access Point(s): 1x Cisco WAP561 a/b/g/n 2.4&5GHz
Router: 1x Cisco RV320 Dual Gigabit WAN VPN Router or Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite.

Other then the AP right off the bat i wont be needing many POE capable ports, but the difference in cost now vs buying multiple POE injectors later is more cost effective in the long term.


TL;DR:
Bought a house, running cable, need to buy new networking equipment.

 

[Mr. F]

I went through a very similar setup, though I set a far lower budget for myself.

I ran (am still running, actually) Cat6, 2-4 drops to each outlet depending on if I needed PoE in the room. I also ran cat6 for all of my PoE network cameras (hikvision). In the end the Cat6 was
a lot tougher to run due to the thicker gauge and stiffer nature, but I'm glad I did it since the heavier gauge wire should perform better for long PoE runs. For working with Cat6 I highly recommend a set of electricians scissors and a good quality stripping tool.

For my POE switch I went with the Netgear M4100-D10-POE. It has 8 POE ports, 2 gigabit uplink ports (Base-T or SFP), full web-based management, lifetime warranty and most importantly (for me) it is fanless. It was also only $120 when I bought it, so I couldn't pass it up. A lot of people are down on Netgear equipment, but I've been using this for months and I recommend it to anyone who asks me for a PoE switch suggestion.

For my network switch I'm using an HP 1800-24G. I was able to get it cheap and it's a great switch as far as I'm concerned. We have several at work and have never had an issue.

I'm using an old Juniper NS50 firewall as a router. It's old and out of date, but I feel that it's better than most consumer gear and it's been working great for me.

Using a mix of Apple and Ubiquiti gear for wireless. I've always had great experiences with Ubiquiti for wireless, but I am annoyed by their non-standard PoE. Their prices are almost always better than other vendors as well.

 

[Patrick]

I just installed my first Ubiquiti AP AC. It is awesome.

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

There's no need for Cat6:

- Cat6 is more expensive. Not just for the cable, but for other components such as patch panels, keystone jacks, etc.
- Cat5e works just fine for 1Gb ethernet at full distance, and even 10Gb for most home-length runs.
- Cat5e is much easier to properly run and terminate. Cat6 is far less tolerant of mistakes when doing punchdowns, maintaining proper bend radius, etc.
- Cat6 cable is usually thicker, meaning that it'll be more difficult to do multiple runs to a given drop if space is tight.
- And finally, absolutely nothing calls for Cat6. Nothing. The next real step up from Cat5e is Cat6a, which is even costlier than Cat6.

(c/p from a previous post.)

 

[spazoid]

I just installed my first Ubiquiti AP AC. It is awesome.

This. I bought my first UAP-LR 2-3 weeks ago for my house. Buying one or two more next week to expand the network to my neighbours houses.

 

[The-Ghost]

I just installed my first Ubiquiti AP AC. It is awesome.

I’m Canadian, so when browsing my usual victims for network gear ncix/newegg/amazon I thought the AC version was just slightly out of reach… then after remembering I live in a border town and can ship to the states I realized it wasn’t really out of reach. No clients that support AC but it will be nice to have for the future. (unifi AC AP @ ~$295 VS WAP561 @ ~$271)

New AP of Choice: Ubiquiti AP AC bonus comes with the POE+ injector

There's no need for Cat6: (..)

I already have a partial box of cat6 from when I pulled cable in my parent’s house, why not use what I have, and match for the install. Cat6 is also better in high interference environments, and I’m not sure what kind of interference sources there are in the walls/house. Haven’t taken possession yet so no rf site survey either.

@Mr. F:

I’m attempting to lower my overall power consumption, and reduce the number of devices required to provide the services needed. I was originally planning on using theHP 1810-24Gbut with the added cost of multiple POE injectors or a second POE switch I found it to be more cost effective to get a single POE capable switch (1810-24G v2 @ ~$210 + ~$50/poe device VS. SG200-26P @ ~$390 with 12 poe ports) I'm a fan of Netgear (im leaving a6+y/o GS724t behind to run the network at my parents place, I'd get another Netgear device again but it seems that netgear POE/+ devices are more then the Cisco’s



The router/firewall device is what I’m hung on the most, I’d love a Cisco ASR+ ASA-NG but those would be total overkill for a home network and blow my budget sky-high… I was also considering a pfsense device or another low cost UTM appliance, as an alternative to the edgerouter lite…

 

[pyro_]

One more store for you to add since you are in canada is canada computers. They are fairly competitive with ncix for pricing

 

[Patrick]

I would also consider looking at a Mikrotik unit. I have been running the CRS226 switches for awhile now and they just work. A pfsense machine is also really hard to beat.

 

[bds1904]

I'll second that crs226 switch also. Silent, reliable and 2 10Gb sfp+. Future expandability is important.

 

[The-Ghost]

The CRS226 switch sure are feature filled for the cost, the downside is ive come to the realization that as a first time homeowner i may have set the funding cap slightly higher then i probably should have seeing as how i actually havent moved in yet...

In the interest of stream lining my wants/needs, i believe i need to trims some of the "goodies" out for the time being until im settled and reasonably certain that everything is functioning properly (furnace, appliances, etc..)

I plan on keeping the UAP-AC AP but dropping the cisco SG200-26G POE to the HP 1810-24G v2 and picking up a low cost refurb desktop to run pfsense. I was gonig to get the ALIX APU or a USG50 but i think costwise the refurb PC for ~$150 is the best route to take at the moment as far as a UTM system goes.

tl;dr: New houses can be expensive, cutting back on initial equipment