new home network design help


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I bought a new home which I will move into later this year. The home is fairly large at 2750 sqft and a full basement.

 

It is pre-wired with Cat5e with the drops all going down into the unfinished basement. I think there are about 8 data drops.

 

For the most part things like Xboxes, PCs will go directly to Ethernet, but I also want good WiFi coverage from top to bottom for smartphones, tablets, laptops and other things where no Ethernet is available.

 

My current router, Linksys EA6500 doesn't even do well in my current 1200 sqft home. So I assume I'll need an extender or wap or something but wanted to get some advice here.

 

What do I need where the drops are? A router or switch?

Best way to extend WiFi in this situation?

 

Thanks!

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I have 3 of these (UAP-Pro) - http://www.ubnt.com/unifi

One on each floor of the house, vertically staggered so they don't overlap too much. These all go back to a POE Switch in the basement where are the service provider's dmarc's are. The AP's are controlled via software server running on one of my VM's. If you can have your contractors prewire one drop for each ap, these will be so easy to install and will look like a smoke detector on the ceilings.

I have great wifi coverage (2.4Ghz ang 5Ghz) ;)

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I have 3 of these (UAP-Pro) - http://www.ubnt.com/unifi

One on each floor of the house, vertically staggered so they don't overlap too much. These all go back to a POE Switch in the basement where are the service provider's dmarc's are. The AP's are controlled via software server running on one of my VM's. If you can have your contractors prewire one drop for each ap, these will be so easy to install and will look like a smoke detector on the ceilings.

I have great wifi coverage (2.4Ghz ang 5Ghz) ;)

 

I LOVE UBNT. I bought a 3 pack for work to cover a roughly 7k square feet building. The way its designed, it needed 1 in every third of the building. I have each one on a different channel (1 6 11) and they do an amazing job with wireless. So good, that some of the people dont realize they are on wireless. Thats the reliability we need with how much data we deal with. But, they were so good, my boss ended up spending the extra money and getting the pros for another building. The regulars run at 100M on the LAN port, the pros run at a 1G.

As far as POE goes, you DONT need a poe switch for the Unifi AP, it comes with a POE Injector. But I would say buy the Pro and get a POE switch cause the Pro is 1GB and has 5ghz radio.

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Thanks guys. Those look awesome! Unfortunately I don't have any influence over the cabling. I already asked when I realized there was no drop in the loft. I will try again once construction begins and I do a walk through at about that point though.

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I think I'm sold on the UAP-Pro for WAP. How hard will it be to go add new drops in a home that's already pre-wired? How do you run that cable from the upstairs to the basement without tearing up everything? :) I know where I'd want them to go on the ceiling, but don't think they'll let me say during construction "oh, and I want a new drop here and one here!" though that would be nice.

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Awesome. I'm a Cisco guy (one of our sites for work has a wireless controller that's got 200AP's) but couldn't justify their WLC's for home.

 

Is your new home under construction now (i.e. just framed, etc) ? Or is it finished. If it's just framed that would be easy to add runs. If not, you'd have to do some cable fishing ;)

 

I assume there must be a path from the drops on each floor to some central place that brings them all back down to the basement. Additional drops would just follow the same path.

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Actually they haven't even broke ground yet. That should be any day and should be done before the end of the year.

 

I'm thinking of keeping an eye out for the contractor that does the cabling and slipping him a hundred bucks to put some new ones where I want.

 

Now, what would be good for the basement router?

 

I'm looking at the Netgear FVS318G, but the reviews on it are shaky. The Cisco ones weren't much better. Seems like there's not many NON-wireless options out there anymore. Any suggestions?

My Comcast speeds are 50mbps down and 10mbps up and plugged into my Linksys EA6500 I do get those speeds, but the Netgear looks like a bottleneck. Don't want the router to bottle neck the internet speed.

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Actually they haven't even broke ground yet. That should be any day and should be done before the end of the year.

 

I'm thinking of keeping an eye out for the contractor that does the cabling and slipping him a hundred bucks to put some new ones where I want.

 

Now, what would be good for the basement router?

 

I'm looking at the Netgear FVS318G, but the reviews on it are shaky. The Cisco ones weren't much better. Seems like there's not many NON-wireless options out there anymore. Any suggestions?

My Comcast speeds are 50mbps down and 10mbps up and plugged into my Linksys EA6500 I do get those speeds, but the Netgear looks like a bottleneck. Don't want the router to bottle neck the internet speed.

Build a mini ITX Box with Pfsense, buy a cisco switch, smile :D

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PFsense on a vm would be good. I'm sure Budman can help you config that.

I run a Cisco ASA 5510 at home as my firewall.

Build a mini ITX Box with Pfsense, buy a cisco switch, smile :D

Gigabit, POE Catalyst 2960 switch will add a few bills ;)

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