When considering how to think about, design, and develop a home network you must consider your specific situation. If I were to pick one topic I would have to stress the word CHANGE. Change will happen to your network over time and you must be able to react and plan for it. Networks are never static over time. Here are some items to consider:
- Are you going to stay put for very long?
- Renters know this, you don't just punch a hole in the wall to do something; you will end up having to repair it before you leave
- The answer to this question might mean the difference between an all wifi or a partial wifi solution
- What are you planning on doing with your network?
- You may have simple plans for what you are doing now, but what about the future uses?
- It's not always about gaming
- Consider things like setting up for IOT, cameras, and media in the future
- Write up a list of the order of importance for things you will use the network for
- Cables will stay, devices will always be subject to moving
- If you have spent the time putting a cable into a wall or overhead, you will really not want to move it again
- I have moved my main router to 5 different locations in my house over the years - will you have to do the same
- Consider the fact that equipment may fail and have to be replaced
- You may, over time, have different ISPs that you deal with - I have dealt with 3 different ISPs over the years, each one had a different way of presenting their services to my house (dial up, cable, fiber optic)
- Do you really want to drill that hole?
- Once you drill a hole, you are stuck with it
- If you ever move you will have to repair it
- Placement of a hole is important, can it be hidden - not everyone wants to see a cable sticking out of a wall, especially spouses
- Always start with the cabling
- If your neighbors are "jaming" the wifi signal it will be nice to be able to fall back on cabling to supply your network needs
- Don't forget you have options: Ethernet, Coax Cable, fiber optic in addition to wifi
- Patch panels, strategically placed, help in the movement of equipment
- If you use keystone patch panels with straight through couplers you will always have the ability to use already made cables
- Couplers allow you to move the positions of the Ethernet cable ends on a single patch panel
- Patch panels allow you to use small patch cables to make one long connection between patch panels when a direct connection was not available
- Consider the judicious use of vlans in the Network to isolate equipment
- Vlans give you the ability to minimize the number of cables run to different parts of the house; you use a "trunk" line from one managed switch/router to another and keep other ports on the router/managed switch to one specific vlan
- Vlans give you the ability to isolate different segments of your network for different purposes
- If the router from your ISP doesn't have vlan capability, you can always put a router behind it that does, or alternatively use your own router for the connection to the ISP
- Use the highest bandwidth switches and routers that your budget will allow
- As bandwidth gets cheaper, and/or the signal from your ISP changes over time you may encounter a situation where it is advantageous to have already installed equipment that can meet the bandwidth increase
- This means that you should always consider the cabling and what it's bandwidth capability provides; right now Cat5e should be sufficient, but you may want to consider Cat6 and above for growth
- Always consider the unthinkable, like failures and how it will affect the network
- I have had older equipment fail on me when it was most inconvenient; being able to quickly replace the equipment because you thought out the problem beforehand will help
- I have lost equipment to lightning strikes; never assume that it will not happen to you
- Put lightning arrestors on Ethernet lines from the outside and on Coax cable connections to equipment
- If at all possible get a whole house surge protector for those times when a higher than usual voltage spike happens that gets into your house
- If it is within your budget consider the judicious use of UPS at different spots in your network; sometimes a hard fail of power will cause a failure in hard drives
- If some piece of equipment fails in the network, how fast can you come back up to a semi normal state, or at least most of your list of network importance from #1 above
- Consider security when you are setting up the network
- It goes without saying that IOT equipment needs to be isolated, due to it's very nature of contacting outside servers; if at all possible, keep the information in your house
- Never assume that the router on the perimeter will always protect you from intruders; in fact, always assume that someone has already attacked and entered your network and design accordingly
