Home Networking

[The_Hawk]

As I plugged in another POE camera to the network I started to wonder a little about what is normal these days. My 24 port switch currently has 17 lines plugged in with another to come when I install the next camera.

Two fo those 17 go to the main TV and the kids TV both of which have a small switch to divvy up the connection to the devices plugged in at each location. The kids only have 3 devices at the moment, but if I ever get around to plugging in all the older consoles there is a few more. The main TV on the other hand has five or six ethernet loving things…

So the switch in the server rack is starting to look full, not as neat as I would like, but it’s a work in progress. I only recently grabbed out the Dymo and labelled all the plugs after upgrading to a layer 2, POE switch (which I picked up 2nd hand and very cheap) and caring a little more about what is plugged in where. I’m loving POE and while I’m only using some of the very basic mangement stuff in the swtich it’s nice to exclude/quarantine some port from others.

Because everyone likes pictures:

So who else is starting to wonder just how large an enterprise they are capable of running from home

[kyte]

Good god! faint. Nope, nothing like that.

[recd]

Almost everything in our place is connected using wireless, including TVs. If NBN ever arrives might look at adding ethernet.

[FaultyTaco]

My NBN NTD and router is located behind the loungeroom TV cabinet, so anything there that can be connected by Ethernet is, there’s a Cat6 cable run from the router to my study, where an unmanaged switch connects any other Ethernet connectable devices.
I only use wireless for devices that cabling is unsuitable such as laptops, phones, tablets, DIY home automation sensors etc (and my printer, because it’s in an inconvenient location)

[hawker]

I’m not running as much ethernet as you, but I do have a little set up going on in an old TV Cabinet I repurposed. Looks like time for another dusting though, I normally would try and space things out a bit more but it’s a well ventilated room and also has a split system air con for summer.

I have FTTN connected via a Fritzbox 7490. Out of that I run a connection to my Mac Pro, Mac Mini you can see (downloads machine) ethernet over power for my living room (which runs to an airport extreme base station delivering wifi to the living room - the other end of the house). Last port runs to the Netgear switch you can see on the second level, which runs to the two QNAP boxes and another mac mini on my desk (just a back up machine).

Everything else is wireless.

[Orestes]

Almost everything is 802.11N in my household. I’ve managed to automate quite a few things with homekit and a couple of Apple TVs including a vintage Pioneer valve amplifier with volume control from my MacBook, or iPhone. I don’t have a single ethernet cable in my house at the moment. I have a couple of HDMI cables and an optical cable, as well as countless RCAs thats about as complicated as it gets.

[The_Hawk]

How many wireless things?

Do you have any issues or does it all “just work”

I used to get clashes with the WiFi, although I suspect that was mostly because the modem was getting reset pretty often thanks to a crappy ADSL connection so would lose track of the IP allocations. These days my internet connection is pretty stable (cable) but everything is still handled by DHCP, but static assigned by the router to ensure consistency (it also means I can run reports on who has been using how much data). I know I’m a little special as you can read in this other thread:

Typical number of networked devices in your home?

How many devices do you have on your network? I started to run into minor issues when the modem rebooted due to DHCP allocation of IP addresses. Setting fixed IP’s used to be a reasonable solution but as the number of devices increased it became a PITA. So I moved to DHCP tables that provided IP’s based on MAC Addresses. Brilliant! Having a Gargoyle router made this nice and easy and allowed me to track where the bandwidth gets used (as well as limit the kids after hours when they are suppo…

I’ve just reviewed and I’m up to 67 devices of which 53 are in active use. The remainder are USB ethernet, docks, old gaming consoles and things that get occasional use and there is probably a few more I could add to that part of list if I was particularly keen.

I was discussing it with my Wife recently and we agreed that if I was hit by a bus she would be in trouble if anything went wrong since she has no clue how it’s all pieced together… Maybe I should print out a network map and stick it to the inside of the server cabinet

[Orestes]

Hi,

I’m currently running 2x Apple TVs a 3rd generation for audio duties and a 4th generation for iview TV duties, as well as Chinese streaming box for movies. Then I have a Tp-Link wifi range extender, and an airport express bridged into that for outdoor speakers. I also have two computers, my laptop + home desktop. It works, mostly because I’ve kept everything the same brand/type. The only clash I had was with my Apple TVs sharing the same name until I fixed that. I find if I keep everything in the Apple ecosystem it just works as far as its concerned its all using AirPlay streaming protocols except the Chinese thing which sits by itself connected to the lounge room TV and doesn’t interfere with the rest of the network topology.

[Currawong]

I don’t have that many devices, and all iDevices are wireless, but I’ve been searching for something to replace my Time Capsule which is the main wireless in the house and this thread has inspired me to look into PoE. It looks as if Netgear + Ubiquity might be the go for me. Now to see if I can get the wiring through the walls…