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Hi all,

I’m going to start building a house this year. I will implement a lot of home automation into this house. The home automation software I have chose is very open and IP based. So essentially all home automation commands and data, ranging from light buttons, power outlets, temperature sensors, light sensors, movement sensors, access control, video surveilance,… will be sent over a classical wired network.

I’ve chosen Cat6 as the wireing since it relatively cheap and still future proof enough for the upcoming years.

I want to implement a Gigabit ethernet network throughout the entire house (even though the home automation software only needs 100 Mbit, but since this wil only be one part of the entire network, I figure I’d use Gigabit all the way)

The house will have about 16 locations (upstairs and downstairs) which will all have (at least) two wired connectors fitted into the wall.

Throughout the house four or five panel PC’s will be fitted into the walls. The panel PC’s are essentially low power PC’s (but complete PC’s nonetheless), running on VIA CPU’s or maybe Intel Celerons. They are passively cooled and only contain a small harddrive (I might even use compactflash cards as the harddrive, not sure about that yet). There will also be central server where not only the home automation software will run on, but which will also be used as video and audio server, print server and regular file server (hence the wish for Gigabit ethernet). The home automation software has been built in such a way that one server is the master server, and all the panel PC’s are slaves. Should, for any reason, the master server drop out, one of the Panel PC’s will take over and then act as the main server. Should that Panel PC also drop out (unlikely, unless there is a total power outage), another Panel PC will take over, etc…

For the main server I plan to put a 4U rackmount case together (Antec Take4) and put this into a small cabinet. Other things I will need of course are a decent router (already decided – Draytek), a decent rack mount UPS unit (not decided on that one yet) and a good switch. Because I’ll need at least 32 connections, I’m not sure yet if I’ll use a 48 port switch or two 24 port switches (= one downstairs and one upstairs… this could be easier when it comes to troubleshooting).

My main problem is which switch I should choose. Initially I was going for the HP Procurve 1800 series, which seems to be an excellent switch for the money it costs. That was, until I read about the fact this switch does not seem to support Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) which ends up in broadcast storms over the network in case your want to use the Sonos music system (which I do!). This seems to be the fault of the switch, and as far as I can see or even read, the ONLY downside of the switch so far… bummer!

Maybe I could use the Procurve 1400 series instead, but that’s an unmanaged switch series. Not that this really matters a whole lot, I’m sure it will work, it’s just that I’ve never had the chance to tinker with managed switches and I was kind of looking forward to this. I've already looked at Linksys are D-link as well, but it seems to me all their switches are...well, not very good... Another reason I was going for the ProCurve 1800 is because it's a fanless switch. I am going to install all this stuff into a cabinet, but still it would be nice to keep this cabinet as mute as possible. This is also one of the main reasons I'm going with the Antec case.

So here’s the question: which switch would you recommend? Obviously the Procurve 2900-48G would do nicely, but that’s a but overkill I fear. . Would an unmanaged switch suffice, or would it be best (for my use) to use a managed switch? Would it be a good idea to use VLAN’s or not? I welcome any input I can get.

I’ve also got a side question. I’ve leaned everything I know about networks by myself. I also don’t work in the IT business, so sometimes it’s hard for me to keep up when it get really technical/theoretical. I’ve already messed with a lot of ‘home’ and ‘small bussiness’ hardware (which is probably why I also like this site so much), but once it reaches a certain ‘professional threshhold’ I’m in the dark. Could someone please explain a few tings to me? What is the difference between layer 2 and layer 3 switches. I know this is based on the OSI model, and that layer two switches are cheaper and faster, and only use MAC addresses to do their switching, where layer 3 switches base themsevelves upon IP addresses… but what I really want to know is where this difference comes in. (a router is level 3, right?). When do you use one type of switch and when do you use the other?
Again, all input is much welcomed.

thanks!
alan

TBH I think managed switches are overkill for a home network; though if you've got the cash to spare, there's no harm other than the learning curve for managing the switch(es).

On the one switch vs. two issue, there are pros and cons to each approach. Separate 16-port switches for each floor will be cheaper, and will require significantly less wiring between floors. Multiple switches also make it less likely that you'll lose the entire network if there's a nearby lightning strike. However, multiple switches will limit the bandwidth between the server and the systems that are not on the same switch as the server. Given that the server itself will probably be the bottleneck unless you're using multiple NICs on it, the bandwidth issue may not really matter.

Regarding the STP issue... I'm not personally familiar with the Sonos, but a bit of Googling seems to indicate that the problem relates to the use of Sonos with both a wired and WiFi connection simultaneously. This really sounds like a bug in the Sonos firmware to me, but there's a simple workaround: disable WiFi capability on any Sonos devices which are connected to the wired network.

I would just run an unmanaged GigE switch unless you are going to want to put multiple NICs in the server for more bandwidth. Then you will need a switch and NIC and OS combination that supports the same link aggregation technology.

On the one hand I'm all for simplicity but on the other I'm tempted to say go with a managed/smart switch so you can use vlans.

It's far from essential but given that you really want home automation stuff to be as reliable as possible it might be a good idea to have some separation between, for example, your door openers and desktop computers. Of course one question you have to ask is whether the way you'll be using the home automation stuff is amenable to that kind of separation... If you're going to separate the automation from your desktops then maybe you'll be giving up a bunch of features that make the automation stuff worth having!

The other way of looking at it is that some of the entry level smart/managed switches are that expensive (EG Netgear GS724T which is £110 Vs maybe £60 for the cheapest possible dumb switch). They may not be great but they work (that 724 is also fanless BTW) so it's not like you need to spend a fortune on this stuff.

I'd also invest in at least one PoE switch and use PoE where ever possible. Having data and power in one cable makes life a lot easier for devices that are going to be embedded in walls!

PoE is also nice in that you only have to put the switch on a UPS rather than needing a UPS at each phone / camera or whatever is running on the PoE.

I'd agree that managed switches are overkill.
I'd go as far as to say unsuitable actually.

1) They're noisy - many of them are designed for server room 19" racks and run their fans loud because noise isn't an issue.
2) They're complex, in that they may have advanced capabilities enabled by default that require configuration to be disabled.
3) Things you'd expect a dumb, unmanaged switch to do by default may not be enabled by default on a layer-3 switch.

Get a D-Link, Netgear, TP-Link cheap unmanaged switch.
Go 48-port for simplicity, you don't want the uplink between two switches to be a bottleneck, plus even unmanaged switches sometimes have web-interfaces which means you want all your ports on one interface.

With respect to PoE, it's pretty expensive to get full PoE on a multi-port switch; It's usually only half the ports.
For example, the cheapest PoE switch (only 10/100) I could find that provided all 48-ports with power was a Cisco Small Business SF300 48PP which is close to triple the cost of similar non-PoE switch.
TP-Link are reasonably new (to the European market at least) and they are very cheap but so far they seem both capable and reliable, and that's both user and profesionally-published reviews.

If you want an unmanaged switch, Netgears are inexpensive, relatively reliable, and have a lifetime warranty.

If you want a managed switch, Cisco's SG300 small business line has more features than you can shake a stick at, ranges between 10 and 52 port models, has models with and without PoE, and a lifetime warranty at reasonable prices. Since they are part of the small business line, firmware upgrades are free for the life of the switch (no maintenance contracts required). I have one of their 10-port PoE models in my network right now.

Note that the SG300 models can be switched between Layer 2 and Layer 3 if you really want to play around.

If you want VLAN capability without dealing with a fully-managed switch, give Netgear's line of "Smart" switch a look. The Netgear FS726TP switches that I have used have been reliable. I have not yet used the VLAN functionality, but from what I saw in the manual, configuration looked straightforward.

The primary reason that the FS726TPs were purchased was their PoE capability, which has worked well. You might want to consider getting this capability for future use. Note that if you want gigabit, you would need the GS line instead of FS.

P.S. The major difference between Layer 2 and Layer 3 switches is that Layer 3 switches can do routing. Which means you really don't need one for home use. A number of businesses will do routing with a Layer 3 switch and use it as the gateway.

There are some switches that could technically be called Layer 2+ out there (an example would be the now-discontinued but still decent Dell PowerConnect 5548). These switches support some but not all Layer 3 functions, or have limits; the Dell for example, supports 64 static routes if I remember correctly.

Layer 3 switches are overkill for home unless you're training for experience.

I will echo what others have said in that I think unmanaged switches would be fine...BUT you can get some decent pre-owned managed switches if you're ok with that...and still use them as "semi-managed" if you want. Just because they're managed doesn't mean you have to do a bunch of management if you intend on using a single subnet/VLAN. I put an Extreme Networks X350-48t in my home (disclaimer: I do work in IT and we do use Extreme Networks switches at work, so I'm familiar with their configuration...which is stupid simple). These can be found on eBay for under $200.



Now the X350 line is a layer 2 managed switch, and isn't stackable in the case of wanting to go multiple switches (you can uplink them to each other though, using either a static LAG or LACP if you want to increase the bandwidth between them). If you want to step up to a Layer 3 stackable switch, that would be the X450/X460/X480 line. The X450 is also a (recently) retired model, but still packs plenty of punch for moving packets. When searching eBay you want to look for the X450e ("e" meaning "Edge") or X450a ("a" meaning "Advanced Edge"...supports a few more features you won't need in a small network environment). The X450 non-a or non-e model is an older switch that has a slower ASIC (again, likely still fast enough for your needs).

There's an X450e-24p going on eBay right now for $145 shipped. That's a 24-port PoE switch (not PoE+, you have to step up to the X460 line for that). That's darn reasonable for a fully managed Layer 3 PoE switch. It's also stackable and can be mixed with other models, so long as they're all running the same firmware version. So you could have a stack running an X450e-48t (48-port non-PoE), X450e-24p, and an X250e-48p (48-port 10/100 PoE).

Here's the extent of the commands I had to enter to get my switch passing traffic after doing the initial boot...which is just a few questions asking if you want to enable SNMP, enable telnet (useful if you do want to do a little management or look at port/traffic statistics, etc.), and a few other questions:



The last line reminded me of something...the switches do have a web interface. The downside is that it's Flash based.



A layer 3 switch technically would allow you to forgo the use of a separate router...but, given some of the other features they include I would still put a dedicated router at the front of the network.

curtisb wrote:

The last line reminded me of something...the switches do have a web interface. The downside is that it's Flash based.

I died a little inside reading that.

just brew it! wrote:

curtisb wrote:

The last line reminded me of something...the switches do have a web interface. The downside is that it's Flash based.

I died a little inside reading that.

Imagine how I felt typing it. I try not to use it. We use their Enterprise solution at work. There are some (enterprise) features that require it to be enabled though. One of them is Identity Manager...if it's enabled and we have all of the Active Directory/LDAP information configured it'll track both devices (PCs) and users on a port-by-port basis. I can see who logged onto what port, and when they did so. It does this through Kerberos snooping. It'll also do it with our VoIP phones using the LLDP information.

you can also go on ebay a get a 48 port dell powerconnect switch for less than 700$.
sure its noisy but you can unplug the fans if you want. ive had mine running without a fan for the last few years and other than an snmp alert saying the fans dont run, ive yet to have any issues with it.

i use one at home as i wanted the L3 functionnality...and we have a crapton at the office so im unfortunatly familiar with their command hierarchy.
i used to have an extreme networks switch but it died a very messy death and i couldnt find one so..

Most managed switches for home usage is PnP and basically an unmanaged switch until you decide to do something with it. And not very expensive. So if you think you want segregation at some point, get one. But they are cheap enough as it's no big deal if you want to switch down the line.

The important stuff comes when you not only want to have all the pieces separated, but have the ability to filter between the vlan's and also allow them to share internet and allow some control traffic through. Which means a firewall/router and a bit of setup. But personally, I ditched any form of isolation on my media stuff, but most aren't internet connected, and are using various protocols there don't like to traverse routing boundraries.

For home automation, I would definitely keep separation depending on what you do. Mostly because Home automations, even when network connected, usually isn't in any form IT based, so some stuff lack even basic security measures, or can be badly configured. Depending on product of course. Heck, even commercial solutions are usually so badly configured they are searchable online on and are open for access using default passwords.

To be honest, having enterprise gear is really nice if you know how to use it, otherwise it's a hassle unless your doing it as a learning experience. But while I work with million $ chassis at work, I actually use a couple of Netgear GS108T switches at home, because they work just fine after having been set up with a the vlan's I need, and more importantly, they are fanless, pretty cheap and I don't have any space where I could put a non fanless racksized one.

Now, I do have a decent checkpoint firewall, well almost, the 640 is still on embedded codebase right now, but I am getting a 2200 soon, that is a up to 3Gbit capable firewall (yeah yeah, RFC 3511 UDP 1518byte traffic, but still) but also capable of doing full IPS, AV, filtering, etc, but more importantly, it runs the same software as the production stuff I use daily.

Chrispy_ wrote:

I'd agree that managed switches are overkill.
I'd go as far as to say unsuitable actually.

1) They're noisy - many of them are designed for server room 19" racks and run their fans loud because noise isn't an issue.
2) They're complex, in that they may have advanced capabilities enabled by default that require configuration to be disabled.
3) Things you'd expect a dumb, unmanaged switch to do by default may not be enabled by default on a layer-3 switch.

Let see... None of the above.
1. Tons of fanless options, just as with unmanaged. It depends on port density and things like PoE options. PoE = watts = cooling. A fully fledged big PoE switch using all ports needs something like 800 watts, or between 15 and ~40w per port depending on PoE or PoE+ standard and equipment. That requires bigger powersupplies and more cooling.
2. PnP out of the box for pretty much all I've seen or worked with. Including most enterprise gear that will work as unmanaged out of the box.
3. Not in the last 3 brands I've used, Linksys, Netgear, HP.

I'm using a Cisco SG300-10MPP as my main switch; picked up on Ebay barely used.



PoE, yet fanless (external power brick, but that's fine in my situation). Can be used unmanaged, or switched between Layer 2 or 3 (I'm using mine Layer 2, as I have a very capable WatchGuard XTM-25W firewall). Full gigabit, supports VLANs and LAG; I plan to set up a LAG for my server's dual-gig NIC but haven't done it yet. If you don't need a ton of ports, this is a great switch --and if you like to play, it has a full commandline in addition to its GUI (it uses VxWorks, which several switch vendors like Dell also use, it's quasi-Cisco IOS, but not exactly the same).

I have a Netgear GS110TP ten port PoE that will be added to my network when I eventually replace my ASUS AC router-turned access point with regular access points. It's Layer-2 only, but like the Cisco, it has fiber ports so I can link it and the Cisco through fiber if I want. It'd be more of a "because I can" than anything else, but used 20m fiber patch cables aren't that expensive, and I had a friend ship me some spare GBICs. I planned PoE for both switches for the time I go to access points, or if I look to add security cameras someday.



Dell does very reasonable switches. If you don't need fancy, the PowerConnect 2700 and 2800 lines will do what you want. They can be run unmanaged, or with a WebUI you have to enable. Their main points are inexpensive, and solidly built.

wizardz wrote:

you can also go on ebay a get a 48 port dell powerconnect switch for less than 700$.

Trust me, the Extreme Networks switches will be a ton better. I have a guy who used to work for me and is now Level 3 support for PowerConnect and Force 10...he hates working on the PowerConnect stuff.

I should also point at that for those familiar with Cisco commands and the like, Extreme does offer an xmod for their switches that will let you use the command set you're familiar with. I think it's funny because they call it the "legacy xmod." If you decide you want to try the Extreme command set, you kind of have to change your way of thinking. Extreme manages VLANs, not ports. So adding port 30 to a VLAN called VOIP would be:



Specifying "untagged" isn't strictly necessary as that's the default. All commands have tab completion (or tab will show you a list of the next available command(s)). You can also shorten commands as long as the short version doesn't conflict with another command. So the above could become:

Aphasia wrote:

For home automation, I would definitely keep separation depending on what you do.

I would agree with this if the equipment doesn't need to talk to the internet. There's no need in sending that broadcast traffic towards your router if it isn't necessary. Routes can be created so that your internal data network can still talk to the automation equipment, without routing the automation equipment to the internet.

Aphasia wrote:

It depends on port density and things like PoE options. PoE = watts = cooling. A fully fledged big PoE switch using all ports needs something like 800 watts, or between 15 and ~40w per port depending on PoE or PoE+ standard and equipment. That requires bigger powersupplies and more cooling.

The only way a switch would pull that much power is if you have some high-power usage devices on every port, all running at maximum power usage. This isn't likely even in an enterprise setting. The biggest power usage devices are enterprise APs and security cameras...mainly outdoor security cameras with built in heaters to prevent the dome from fogging up (and to prevent condensation buildup). VOIP phones are really low power usage. The biggest spike from those will be when the phone is ringing or when speaker phone is first initiated.


As for routers, I've mentioned more than once lately that I switched to a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite a few months ago and couldn't be happier with the decision. I haven't used the wireless features in my previous router(s) for a while now, so converting to a non-wireless router was painless. I picked up some enterprise-grade APs on eBay a while back for cheap (less than $100 each). One is a Motorola AP-6532e and the other is an Extreme Networks AP-4532i. They are practically the same AP except one has external antennas and the other is internal. jbi stop reading here The downside, once again, is that the management interface for both is Flash based (they run the same codeset with the only differences being Motorola vs. Extreme logos). There is a telnet/SSH interface, but it's not the easiest command set to figure out. The web interface does offer a wizard to configure it for basic situations, but they are full-fledged enterprise-grade APs (these particular models are 802.11n only, but I do get 300Mbit links on my laptop).

For access points, if you want them, I'd consider looking at some Aruba IAP-105 models used on Ebay. Dual-frequency two-stream N, and super easy to manage. No wireless controller required, they use a virtual controller (requires one IP on top of the IPs of the access points), and if the AP being used as a virtual controller goes down, the units will poll and elect a new virtual controller.

They worked well for me in an educational environment of 35-50 units on a site. Only thing is, HP just bought Aruba so I don't know what will happen to the company in the long run. For now though, good units.

If you're looking for something a little more advanced then a unmanaged switch, and will want to stack switches, the Netgear GS752TXS is a good one that is more affordable then some others.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... gnorebbr=1

48x 1Gig ports and 4x 10Gig SFP ports that can be used as uplink ports or 10Gig ports. They are smart switches which means they have a web interface to manage them, and you can control all of them from one master switch.

For APs, I would go with some router with DD-WRT or EasyTomato in AP mode. Ubiquiti APs are nice, but you won't get to take advantage of their killer features if you're only deploying one.

curtisb wrote:

The only way a switch would pull that much power is if you have some high-power usage devices on every port, all running at maximum power usage. This isn't likely even in an enterprise setting. The biggest power usage devices are enterprise APs and security cameras...mainly outdoor security cameras with built in heaters to prevent the dome from fogging up (and to prevent condensation buildup). VOIP phones are really low power usage. The biggest spike from those will be when the phone is ringing or when speaker phone is first initiated.

True of course. Most phones we have used are like 3-8W, most AP's on the other hand usually take at least a normal PoE load, but the dual radios quite often want either enhanced poe or poe+, at least the cisco's usually want around 20W. But then, depending on your situations, at home you don't have 24AP's on a single switch, and even less chance of needing 48 full power ports. But if you do, that's a full kW. Most switches usually don't do full power on all ports concurrently without extra PSU's anyway. We have a few of those loaded fairly high, but not very many.