N5105 Tipton box as opnsense firewall & switch.

[sevsman]

Hi all,

I have this box https://a.aliexpress.com/_mLrz5E2 and am finally hoping to have downtime in the house that will allow me to turn the internet off for a couple of days and I'm wondering if it's ok to use the other ports to have 1 for wan, 1 to my ap, 1 for a 2.5gb Nas connection and 1 to an unmanaged switch for my son's pc and CCTV.

I know it's not the best idea but I really can't afford a 2.5gb switch until later in the year, but when I can I will have the Topton box set to only output to the switch and everything else will be fed from there.

 

[reasonsandreasons]

If you're only concerned about access between the devices and the internet, it'll be fine and will give you access to greater-than-1G speeds to the internet. You'd just put every port on a different subnet, which might be desirable for isolating things. If you're routing between devices you'll have to resort to bridging, which will go through the CPU and will likely be slower than line rate. Not sure how much slower and if that matters for you, though.

 

[sevsman]

Thanks for the response mate.
The Nas will need to be accessible by the ap (Netgear rax200 in ap mode) because it'll feed my TV for the emby server but apart from that it can all be separate.
I'll Google bridging because I'm about 100% newer to opnsense than the newest person is and I have never set up anything other than a normal router from Netgear or Asus and put my VM modem in modem mode.

 

[sevsman]

Hopefully one last (it won't be lol) question.
The Nas and ap need to talk to eachother for emby but the switch that'll feel the boys pc and CCTV doesn't because I will use the app to view the CCTV and it's not IP.
What would be the best way to set this scenario up as my net is 1.2gb down and if possible I'd like to keep the loss to a minimum.

 

[blunden]

Since it sounds like you might not want to spend too much on a 2.5G switch in the future either and you don't necessarily require the most advanced switch features or a high number of port, you might be interested in the cheap Chinese switches found on AliExpress.

An unmanaged 4 * 2.5GBase-T + 2 * 10G SFP+ switch is usually in the $25-30 range, and unmanaged 8 * 2.5GBase-T + 1 * 10G SFP+ switches are fairly cheap too.

 

[sevsman]

I've got 2 switches in my Amazon cart at the moment. Ones a Sodola 9 port 2.5gb managed and the other is a zyxel 5 port 2.5gb unmanaged.
When I can afford it, over household bills, I'll probably get the managed as I love learning new things, even if it's not of any real world use to me.
Learning is fun and that's why I bought the opnsense box in the first place.
My Netgear is very very good but I love to tinker with things.

 

[blunden]

I've got 2 switches in my Amazon cart at the moment. Ones a Sodola 9 port 2.5gb managed and the other is a zyxel 5 port 2.5gb unmanaged.
When I can afford it, over household bills, I'll probably get the managed as I love learning new things, even if it's not of any real world use to me.
Learning is fun and that's why I bought the opnsense box in the first place.
My Netgear is very very good but I love to tinker with things.

What are they priced at?

 

[sevsman]

Zyxel 5-Port 2.5G Multi-Gigabit Unmanaged Switch for Home Entertainment or SOHO Network [MG-105] https://amzn.eu/d/1Jhy5Lt

SODOLA 9 Port 2.5G Easy Web Managed Switch,1 10G SFP+ Slot&8 x 2.5G Base-T Ports,Static Aggregation,QoS/VLAN/IGMP, Metal Fanless Managed Multi-Gigabit Network Switch https://amzn.eu/d/5uZt7TH

I just bought the zyxel and it arrives tomorrow. So this weekend it'll be all new cables up to the loft and the boxes set up and then brought back down to their respective places.

I'll familiarise myself with opnsense first and get a better managed switch in a couple of months, as to not break everything at once lol

All the galv conduit for outside, cst6a s/ftp cable and tooless connectors really add up in price but I like the tooless connectors for some crazy reason