Network Hardware Recommendation

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unplugme71

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I'm almost done wiring my home with CAT6 cables. So far I have two drops in each bedroom, office, garage, and kitchen, 6 drops in the living room (16 total)

I purchased a 12U wall-mounted rack with a 24 port patch panel. All the wiring goes in my utility closet that has my hot water tank. I'm going to build a splash wall in case of a pipe burst so it won't ruin my electrical equipment - but that's another topic. I also have two 20-amp outlets on the wall.

The hardware I plan to have on my 12U "network" rack will contain the patch panel, network switch, pfSense 1U VPN/Firewall server, Google Fiber modem, and 2U UPS battery backup.

The current two drops in my office will be for my desktop and printer. However, I also plan on having 2 servers, possibly more, and 3 network storage devices (2 for redundancy, 1 backup). I would also like two 802.11ac Wireless Access Points.

Requirements:
Link Aggregation and LACP
VLAN and (guest VLAN not a strict requirement)
QoS/DoS support
Cable diagnostics
PoE

I'm having trouble designing out my network. Do I run another 10-20 drops in the office closet for my servers and storage, or do I put them all on a dedicated switch with a 10GB uplink to the switch in the utility closet?

The storage devices each have 4 Ethernet ports. Should I team 2 pairs - one for file transfers to other storage devices and one for file transfers to clients? Or should I team all 4 together and not segregate the storage/server and clients network?

Should I get two 24port stackable switches or a single 48 port switch for the utility closet? Does stacking provide any advantages other than resiliency - and does that even matter considering my clients will only have one network connection to the network anyway?

I'd like to hear some thoughts and input from people who have wired their home for networking with servers and network storage.












 
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bill001g

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It depends how much money you have to spend. The HP procurve tends to be a mid price commercial device. They are cheaper than cisco or juniper but cost more than pro-sumer switches like linksys. Stack switches are mostly for redundancy purposes although when you talk stacking multiple 48 port switches it is done for cost saving also. The stack cable make it appear it is a single switch but the difference is that you are limited to the stack cables speed between the switch. If you were to buy a chassis based switch each card would use the backplane to connect to the other cards rather than a stacking cable. It really depends if you can exceed the speed of the stack cable and how fast that runs depends on the model of the switch. Some of the higher end stacking switches use 40g stack cables.

Link aggregation sounds really good but when you get to the fine print it doesn't work as well as you would hope. Say I had 4 1gig connection between 2 devices. If I were to transfer a large file it will only use only a single cable so it will be limited to 1g. In effect it does a mathmatical claculateion based on source and dest ip and ports and select a path. All the traffic for that session will always follow that path.

The only way to get link aggregation to work well is to have many open session with lots of machines. It will in theory balance but it makes no attempt to look at utilization. So if a machines is say using 100% of cable 1 and a second machine wants to transfer data and it gets unlucky and the math says to use cable 1 both will fight over the same cable leaving the others unused.

Link aggregation has fallen out of favor now that 10g ports exist when you actually have devices that can exceed 1g of traffic. Link aggregation would be used for redundancy on stacked switches. You would plug a cable into each and if a switch failed it would just continue to use the other cable. This is the fastest form of failover for server protection.


 
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unplugme71

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I looked into purchasing two switches, one for the utility closet and 1 for my office where my servers and storage would go. The fiber cables to span across aren't that expensive, I found them for around $40 ea. The problem is the SFP's cost about $540 each from Netgear! However, if I buy 10, I can get it for $163ea. I don't understand why buying a single would be 3x more?!?!

The other option I have is to buy a single 48 port in the utility closet and run the necessary drops for my servers and storage to the office. The cost of running 20 drops to the office would be a lot cheaper than the SFP's, but then again, I'm dealing with 20 drops for the connections.

If I did the LA with 4 lines between switches, that would allow 4 file transfers to max out each line (in theory), right? I understand it wouldn't give me 4Gb from host to client.

Also, if you know any 24 or 48 port switches that provide 2 or 4 ports of 10GB copper for uplinks instead of fiber, please let me know.

I'd like to stay around 650-850 per switch if possible.
 
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bill001g

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going to be hard to get that low when you want 10g. You are going to have to use the small business solution devices from places like netgear or dlink or someone. The cheapest switches you will find from HP are things like 2920 but I have never seen them under $1000 when you include the cost of the 10g uplink board.

Unless you really need 10g you might be better off using multiple 1g fiber bonded ports.

Just as a note I work for a very large company and we still have floors in some building that have over 100 active users and the uplink is only 1g. Even on some sites that we have replaced the uplinks with 10g the connection out of the location is well under 1g in most cases. There are no local server and there is no local internet only client machines and ip phones so all traffic must pass over the wan lines. We easily run sites with over 1000 users on less than 1g. You need to analyze you traffic very carefully to see if you would really need 10g.
 
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kanewolf

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The HP 2920-24G is available on Amazon for just over the $850 mark. It supports 10GE over copper. You could get a then also get a 2929-24G-POE+ switch to power your APs. Look at either the Engenius or Ubuiquiti brands for your APs. The Unifi software with the Ubiquiti APs has features to improve roaming between APs.
 
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bill001g

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Yes the base switch is that cheap unfortunately you need this module in the back + sfp.
http://www.amazon.com/HP-Expansion-Module-2port-J9731A/dp/B00B58LKCI

Even in cisco and juniper devices that can take module boards the cost of the 10g interface are extremely expensive compared to the base switch/router cost.

Still this HP switch is one of the best I have seen for the price even when you pay for the 10g interfaces. Normally this is a "cheap" switch when we are looking at them. It does not support all the layer3 features we many times need so we have to go to the 3800 series which is much more expensive.
 
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kanewolf

kanewolf

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They do have the 10G-Base T uplink module -- J9732A -- $450 upgrade...
It didn't sound like the OP had run ANY fiber in the build out. For 10GE I do agree that fiber would be the preferred solution.
 
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bill001g

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I was confusing 2 different threads on similar topics, that one had a fiber requirement but you are correct that is the other module and is a little cheaper because it can run on copper and does not require SFP.
 
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unplugme71

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I don't mind using fiber if I have to. My concern with the 10g is the cost of SFPs.

Edit: I'm also considering possible running two or four 1Gb lines and bonding them. That way if a single 1Gb line gets saturated, data can pass over the other lines.
 
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bill001g

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Without rereading the thread since I forget....The cost of SFP for copper and fiber are pretty much the same. There are starting to be switches with built in 10g copper ports and that has cut the cost of the copper a small amount.

Be very careful bonding does not increase the rate of a single transfer...at least using the standard 802.3ad. It is best thought of as balancing by session. It is really stupid it does not even look at the utilization it makes the path selection based on ip and port numbers. It can decide if you get unlucky to run all your traffic on a single connection and leave the other idle. It is best used for a lot of average size session going to many users it does not work well with a small number of large size transfers. You would be best off using a routing protocol to load balance by packet if you need it but that requires layer 3 switches.
 
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unplugme71

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If I can send backup data over 1 path, replication over another path, web and email over another path, and everything else over the 4th path that would be ideal too. Doesn't necessarily have to be 'bonded' as long as each connection from switch 1 to switch 2 can provide some type of limitation. I guess I can do that using VLANs too, right?

The switches I'm considering are either the Ubiquiti Unifi 48 port with POE or the Netgear S3300-52X. I'm not sure but I think the Netgear model supports 10G over copper without an extra module. I could be wrong. I also don't know the max length of cable the 10G can handle or if it only supports DAC with 1 or 3 meter lengths?



 
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bill001g

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You can use vlans to do that if you like. I would just try bonding then and see if you get lucky. My comment was because some people think they can exceed 1g say doing a backup and that is a single session. Your plan is different sessions so that should work. In a overly simplistic explication lets say it sends all traffic from even number TCP ports over the first link and odd number over the second link. You can to a point select what fields it looks at.

10g can go 100m with cat6a or cat7. Technology changes so fast I can't keep up with it. Used to be only the large vendors sold 10g so it was easy to learn all the switches. From a quick look at the manual it says it has 2 10g copper ports built in so you should be able to use normal cat6a cables.
 
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unplugme71

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In that case, maybe I'll go with the Netgear switches over the Ubiquiti then. And as far as the 10G uplinks, can Cat6 cable work too, over a shorter distance? We are talking 100ft here. Not 100m.
 
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bill001g

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Cat6 is rated to like 50m I think. If you are buying new I would spend the extra and get 6a since it is not a lot. If you have them already try it and see, most times the port refuses to come up if the cable is too long. If it doesn't work then you can buy a cable
 
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unplugme71

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I only have bulk Cat 6 already. 50m is more than I need for the run. Probably 40m is about right. When the switches become available I will try it out. Haven't seen anyone selling these yet.

 
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