What equipment for home network backbone (1Gbps)?

[lenkiatleong]

Hi,
1) To enjoy 1 Gbps FTTH services, i need to build a home network backbone soon. Recommended by "provider" to use either Cat5e or Cat6 but i am exploring whether fiber optic would be better or not.

2) Currently, i'm using coaxial cable to enjoy internet service as shown below:

ServiceProvider --> CableModem --> Dlink Dir655 router --> PC

3) I do not have any home network wired (UTP) to the router yet. Other nodes in other rooms are using wireless G/N. With FTTH services coming, i am now seriously thinking to wire up all my rooms to the router in order to enjoy higher speed as below:

FTTH SP --> ONT --> Modem -- Router --> Switches in rooms --> PCs/AV/HDTVs/PS3/Blurays/NAS/Printer/MediaPlayer

4) The home network backbone i'm referring to are the Router --> Switches in rooms.

5) The end results that i am trying to achieve is to get 1 Gbps speed (download from SP) in any room from any node assuming that only 1 PC (node) is in use and SP really provide that speed. Currently, i could get the bandwidth that i subscribed to when the PC is connected directly to the router. Using wireless or switch which connects to one of router port (1Gbps), i could not get that.

6) Therefore, i hope that gurus here could help me with router/switch/cable type selection (FO or Cat6) or anything that i may have missed. I could not find any home internet router and switches that make the backbone using UTP or FO. In my opinion, without a backbone (1Gbps), PCs not connected directly to the router would not get the max speed as subscribed.

7) My rigs that require internet/LAN are as below:

a) Living room:
- HDTV
- PS3 (going to buy for the boys soon)
- AV receiver
- Bluray
- NAS
- HTPC

b) Room1, room2, room3, room4 and study room:
- HDTV
- Bluray
- Printer (only one room)
- Media player (buying soon)
- PS3 (the same box as in living room)

Thanks in advance for advising.

Len

 

[seepy83]

I would first question whether or not you are actually getting 1Gbps service to your house. Businesses pay an incredible amount of money for that much bandwidth, and I'm not aware of any consumer services that deliver that much speed.

Now to address your questions -

-Use Cat6. You don't have any reason to use Fiber.

-Your Router would need a Gigabit uplink port. I'm not familiar with any SOHO devices that can offer this, but I also have never looked for them. In the business world, these are expensive devices.

-You would need at least 1 Gigabit Switch in your house. The number of switches you need would be dependant on whether or not you can keep all of your UTP runs within the distance limitations of the Cat6 spec and have them all terminate in the same location.

-You should use Solid Core Cat6 cable to terminate your runs onto keystone jacks in the rooms where devices will connect, and a patch panel where your switch is. These Solid Core Cat6 runs should be a maximum of 90 meters

-From the Keystone Jacks/Patch Panel you should use a maximum of 5 meters of Stranded Cat6 Patch Cable on each end to connect your devices.

As a side note, many of those devices might only have 10/100 NICs in them, so they would not be capable of a 1Gbps link. Also, the chances of a server on the internet being able to feed YOU (in addition to anyone else connected to it) 1Gbps are extremely low.

 

[sonoma1993]

if their is a 1gbps service out there, do any of the current soho wireless routers that are on the market even have a 1Gbps wan port? Im not even sure what all included in today soho devices

I would suggest if you have an somewhat older spare pc around the house that not being used for anything. throw a couple gigabit network cards in it. download and install smoothwall express 3 sp1. use that for your firewall/router. then hook up a nice 8 port switch to be used as the main switch. then run cat6 cables between the main switch and the switches in the other room.

 

[lenkiatleong]

I would first question whether or not you are actually getting 1Gbps service to your house. Businesses pay an incredible amount of money for that much bandwidth, and I'm not aware of any consumer services that deliver that much speed.

Hi. Thanks for replying. Regarding the 1Gbps, i'm looking forward to the actual speed to be offered. According to this link, the speed will be up to 1Gbps initially.
http://www.ida.gov.sg/Infrastructure/20090717105113.aspx

Now to address your questions -

-Use Cat6. You don't have any reason to use Fiber.

Ok. Noted. I was thinking to stay here long. So, i though Fiber would be more future proof and lasting than Cat6.

-Your Router would need a Gigabit uplink port. I'm not familiar with any SOHO devices that can offer this, but I also have never looked for them. In the business world, these are expensive devices.

If i read correctly, my current Dlink DIR655 has 1 Gbps uplink port and 4x 1Gbps ports. But the problem is, i could only connect them to 4 switches in the rooms and i have 6 rooms to connect. :-(

-You would need at least 1 Gigabit Switch in your house. The number of switches you need would be dependant on whether or not you can keep all of your UTP runs within the distance limitations of the Cat6 spec and have them all terminate in the same location.

Yes. I am trying to work this out. I'm still researching for the best equipment and method to create the backbone. As you advised, Cat6 cable is enough for backbone. Noted. Now, i have to worry or find router that provide at least 6x 1Gbps ports. Any recommendations?

-You should use Solid Core Cat6 cable to terminate your runs onto keystone jacks in the rooms where devices will connect, and a patch panel where your switch is. These Solid Core Cat6 runs should be a maximum of 90 meters

Ok. I like the patch panel concept. Very neat. But would it affect the performance? I hope not.

-From the Keystone Jacks/Patch Panel you should use a maximum of 5 meters of Stranded Cat6 Patch Cable on each end to connect your devices.

Ok. Noted.

As a side note, many of those devices might only have 10/100 NICs in them, so they would not be capable of a 1Gbps link. Also, the chances of a server on the internet being able to feed YOU (in addition to anyone else connected to it) 1Gbps are extremely low.

You are right. What i understand is, retail service providers could offer up to 1Gbps bandwidth for triple play services to each home. Currently, i subscribed to 100Mbps plan and i could only reap it from those servers hosted here locally. So far, the record speed i ever achieve for download locally is 40Mbps. I am looking forward to see more RSP offering services like HD video on demand and etc..

 

[lenkiatleong]

if their is a 1gbps service out there, do any of the current soho wireless routers that are on the market even have a 1Gbps wan port? Im not even sure what all included in today soho devices

I would suggest if you have an somewhat older spare pc around the house that not being used for anything. throw a couple gigabit network cards in it. download and install smoothwall express 3 sp1. use that for your firewall/router. then hook up a nice 8 port switch to be used as the main switch. then run cat6 cables between the main switch and the switches in the other room.

Do you mean like this?

ONT-->Modem-->PC router-->MainSwitch-->Switches in rooms-->equipment

I need to research Smoothwall. Thanks.
Do you have recommendation on MainSwitch and Switches in rooms? I reckon that i need those with uplink port type.

I remembered trying this:
Modem-->Router-->Switch-->PC
where i connect Cat5 from any port in router to any port in switch. The download speed is badly affected. I'm not sure what caused it though. But when i change the switch that caters for straight and cross UTP cable for uplink, the download speed is as good as the router. I am so confuse.

 

[seepy83]

Your "router" (actually a Router, WAP, Switch, and Firewall) with 4 LAN ports is fine, and you don't need a switch in each room. Just connect 1 of the LAN ports on your Router to one of the LAN ports on your Gigabit Switch. If all of your Cat6 runs terminate to a patch panel at the same location, then connect the jacks in your patch panel to the switch with Cat6 patch cables. If 1 Gigabit Switch doesn't offer enough ports, then attach a second gigabit switch to another one of the LAN ports on the Router, and connect additional devices to that.

And no, as long as you are following the Cat6 specifications, a Patch Panel will not slow you down at all. This is the correct way to cable your house. If you start running long patch cables from room to room to connect your devices, you run the risk of have problems because you are not operating within the specifications.

 

[sonoma1993]

Do you mean like this?

ONT-->Modem-->PC router-->MainSwitch-->Switches in rooms-->equipment

I need to research Smoothwall. Thanks.
Do you have recommendation on MainSwitch and Switches in rooms? I reckon that i need those with uplink port type.

I like using the netgear prosafe switches. From what i saw on their website, they come with a lifetime warranty according to netgear they do. Also they do auto uplink on any of the ports. At least the one I have it does. For recommendation, any of the netgear prosafe switches

here the one netgear prosafe switch im using as my main switch. It's one of their smart switches, it's an 8 port switch. When i bought it, i paid around $130 for it.

http://www.netgear.com/Products/Switches/AdvancedSmartSwitches/GS108T.aspx

 

[deimos3428]

I've been employed by a company operating a similar network backbone, and those of us in the fiber world have seen these sort of public relations announcements for decades. My advice to you would be that before you get too optimistic in rewiring your home -- do a bit more digging and look into how much such a connection will cost.

While they may offer 1Gbps connections, I would find it highly unlikely that most residential customers will be able to afford them in the foreseeable future.

 

[sonoma1993]

I need to research Smoothwall. Thanks.

When i was using smoothwall. I was using it when I had my comcast 16/2 internet service. But now since i'm on a att 768k DSL service (not by choice). i just use my linksys WRt54G flashed with dd-wrt for now. I was doing alot of heavy downloading between netflix, my msdn subsciption, bit-torrents, youtube, etc. It was able to handle the traffic good without crapping out on me. When i was using my linksys router, doing some heavy downloading would kill it once in awhile.

I have smoothwal loading on an old a system that has an amd athlon 3000+ XP cpu, asus A7n8X motherboard, 1GB ram, and 20Gb or 40Gb hdd.

 

[robmurphy]

The main problem will be the router.

A router that will provide a WAN to LAN rate of 1Gbs will be expensive. If the PCs in your home network are going to use privat IP addresses the router will need to do full NAT as well as providing a firewall.

If you are going to do it with a PC it will need to be a fairly high spec one. The NAT and firewall functions of the router at 1 Gbs will be very demanding on the CPU.

I very much doubt the gigabit WAN interface can use jumbo frames, so its unlikely the LAN interface would use them. The 2 NICs running at full speed are going to generate a total of about 1,000,000 interupts each second.

It would be interesting to get a few comments from people who work with commercial equipment providing NAT and firewalling at 1Gbs.

Rob.

 

[spidey07]

<snip>
It would be interesting to get a few comments from people who work with commercial equipment providing NAT and firewalling at 1Gbs.

Rob.

It's done in hardware. No CPU needed.

 

[JackMDS]

I think that the OP is in Singapore so some of our USA know how might Not apply.

In such planing I would leave alone the WAN part and concentrate on the LAN part.

Some posts here are much to do about nothing. When very fast services would be available the WAN interface might be totally dependent on the ISP and they will take care of it like FIOS does Now.

I.e., the customer would get a Modem and initial Routing to begin with.

.

 

[lenkiatleong]

Your "router" (actually a Router, WAP, Switch, and Firewall) with 4 LAN ports is fine, and you don't need a switch in each room. Just connect 1 of the LAN ports on your Router to one of the LAN ports on your Gigabit Switch. If all of your Cat6 runs terminate to a patch panel at the same location, then connect the jacks in your patch panel to the switch with Cat6 patch cables. If 1 Gigabit Switch doesn't offer enough ports, then attach a second gigabit switch to another one of the LAN ports on the Router, and connect additional devices to that.

Actually, i am still weighing/researching which way to go. Options are:

Option1: All ports in rooms terminate in a central location.
SP-->Modem-->Router-->GigabitSwitch-->All ports in rooms

- Save on switches.
- More Cat6 cables (SGD65 per port in room)
- Higher cable redundancy
- Higher download/transfer speed??

Option2: Switches in each room
SP-->Modem-->Router-->8port GigabitSwitch-->Switches in rooms

- Not finished researching this method yet.
- Not sure if download speed would be affect by going thru more switches compare to option1. Does anyone encounters any download different after going thru several switches compare to speed if PC is directly connected to router?
- Less Cat6 cables.
- More switches but easily expandable in room if needed.
- Less cable redundancy. Planning to install only 2x Cat6 to each room from central location if i'm going this way.

Option3: Option1 + Option2 model.
SP-->Modem-->Router-->24port GigabitSwitch-->Ports and Switches (if needed) in rooms

- Save on switches. Buy only when needed in future.
- Adequate Cat6 cables
- Higher cable redundancy
- Higher download/transfer speed??

And no, as long as you are following the Cat6 specifications, a Patch Panel will not slow you down at all. This is the correct way to cable your house. If you start running long patch cables from room to room to connect your devices, you run the risk of have problems because you are not operating within the specifications.

Thanks for this info. I will remember to bring this up with the contractor regarding meeting the spec. But what spec measurement should i tell him?
I have seen installer measuring db loss for fiber optic but i am not sure about cat6.

 

[lenkiatleong]

I like using the netgear prosafe switches. From what i saw on their website, they come with a lifetime warranty according to netgear they do. Also they do auto uplink on any of the ports. At least the one I have it does. For recommendation, any of the netgear prosafe switches

here the one netgear prosafe switch im using as my main switch. It's one of their smart switches, it's an 8 port switch. When i bought it, i paid around $130 for it.

http://www.netgear.com/Products/Switches/AdvancedSmartSwitches/GS108T.aspx

I am out of touch with current latest switches tech. Its good to know that any port in switch could auto uplink. With this, i believe you are getting the same download speed using any port in any switch that your PC connects to? I can't wait to hear your response on this. It will cut down my research time. Thanks in advance.

Will check on NetGear switches but they are not providing lifetime warranty here, i believe.

 

[lenkiatleong]

I've been employed by a company operating a similar network backbone, and those of us in the fiber world have seen these sort of public relations announcements for decades. My advice to you would be that before you get too optimistic in rewiring your home -- do a bit more digging and look into how much such a connection will cost.

While they may offer 1Gbps connections, I would find it highly unlikely that most residential customers will be able to afford them in the foreseeable future.

Yes. I have not check the price yet. I was exploring fiber optic option because i only need 4 core cable into each room. But the price of main switch in riser could be very expensive where it houses several FO cards for connection to each room. Then i also need FO type switch.
I think i will abandon this option as i am beginning to understand that current latest switches provide auto uplink in any port. But i have to dig more on the performance. Any website link to recommends?

 

[lenkiatleong]

I think that the OP is in Singapore so some of our USA know how might Not apply.

In such planing I would leave alone the WAN part and concentrate on the LAN part.

Some posts here are much to do about nothing. When very fast services would be available the WAN interface might be totally dependent on the ISP and they will take care of it like FIOS does Now.

I.e., the customer would get a Modem and initial Routing to begin with.

.

Currently, the speed bottleneck for me is the cable modem. Its using DOCSIS 3 which my SP capped the speed to 100Mbps. I reckon my Dlink DIR655 router could cope with 1Gbps uplink but not the cable modem.
So far, i have or could not find any modem that could offer 1Gbps speed for home use and if SP provides so. Let's see what we will get in June/July this year when RSPs begin to offer their services.
Should i go for option 1 or option 2 as in post#13?

 

[deimos3428]

I was exploring fiber optic option because i only need 4 core cable into each room. But the price of main switch in riser could be very expensive where it houses several FO cards for connection to each room. Then i also need FO type switch.

Keep in mind that "fiber to the home" does not require fiber be installed past the demarcation point. Fiber is much more expensive and much harder to install/troubleshoot/repair than copper, and has no strong advantages for residential installation over copper. (Personally I'd recommend taking a good look at wireless-N and avoid running cables through your house at all...the speeds are comparable with multiple antennae.)

Typically, your fiber provider will be able to provide you with a fiber-to-copper media converter to convert the incoming fiber optic signal to 10/100/1000TX at the demarcation point. You'd then connect the media converter's copper port to your home router or switch with a standard CAT5/6 patch cord. Some providers will give you a router which includes the media-converter functionality, but that's more typical of services like DSL. (If they're already providing ethernet over the fiber, it isn't cost effective to employ a full CPE router.)

There are various types of media converters depending on the signal and type of fiber, so don't run out and buy your own. For reference, they are usually a tiny box with a power adapter that looks something like this: http://aaxeon.com/s.nl/it.A/id.200/.f

 

[lenkiatleong]

Keep in mind that "fiber to the home" does not require fiber be installed past the demarcation point. Fiber is much more expensive and much harder to install/troubleshoot/repair than copper, and has no strong advantages for residential installation over copper. (Personally I'd recommend taking a good look at wireless-N and avoid running cables through your house at all...the speeds are comparable with multiple antennae.)

I'm keen to know more about multiple antennae. Do you have some weblinks or description? But having said that, other devices like HDTV, bluray and media player are not equipped with wireless.

Typically, your fiber provider will be able to provide you with a fiber-to-copper media converter to convert the incoming fiber optic signal to 10/100/1000TX at the demarcation point. You'd then connect the media converter's copper port to your home router or switch with a standard CAT5/6 patch cord. Some providers will give you a router which includes the media-converter functionality, but that's more typical of services like DSL. (If they're already providing ethernet over the fiber, it isn't cost effective to employ a full CPE router.)

Ya. The OpCo will provide FO terminal point in every unit. From the TP, it connects to ethernet converter like this:

OpCo-->FO TP-->4 ports (UTP) media converter-->RSP devices.

I'm not so worry about devices used before the RSP as i am pretty sure that RSP would offer ethernet type router to me. Its most likely a 4x port UTP router.

Suggestions earlier says to connect 1x port from router to a Gigabit switch in the central location and from there to patch panel and then to rooms. This is shown in post#13 Option1. With this, there is already one hop down from router and i'm not sure if the download speed would be affected or not.

Option2 is worse. There are several switches down from router (the backbone) and i suspect the download speed could be badly hit.

As i don't have the luxury to test Option1 and Option2, i was banking on the knowledge of forumers here. Currently, all my nodes connect directly to the router and i don't have speed problem.

There are various types of media converters depending on the signal and type of fiber, so don't run out and buy your own. For reference, they are usually a tiny box with a power adapter that looks something like this: http://aaxeon.com/s.nl/it.A/id.200/.f

Thanks for the link. I could not find any converter that offers at least 4x UTP ports. And goodness, these are not cheap!!

 

[robmurphy]

It would be interesting to find out if the rollout of this service is being done with GPON.

If fibre to the home is installed then its almost certain the service provider will give you an ethernet interface. I doubt very much a modem will be required. As JackMDS said the chances are the service provider will also supply the router.

Again as JackMDS suggested the best strategy would be to concentrate on the LAN side. Wired networking will almost always be quicker, simpler, and more reliable than wireless. Wireless makes sense for laptops and some smart phones, but not so much for equipment that sits in the same location most of the time.

For Voip it works realy well with a nice expensive POE (power over ethernet) ethernet switchs that can deal with multiple VLANs on a single ethernet port.

If you want a cheaper option you can use a more basic switch and run ethernet connections for the phones seperately. This will allow you to use VOIP phones, probably SIP based, or ATA adapters. The ATA adapters allow you to connect a normal analogue phone to them. ATA means analogue terminal adapters. All the VOIP phones I have seen that work with POE will also work with a seperate mains adapter.

SIP and working through a router using NAT is another topic. If the service provider recomends, or more likely supplies, the phones/ATA adapters use those. Often the router supplied will have 1 or 2 ATA interfaces (2Wire 2701, Tompson TG784). You may have no real choice on this if you want to use their service.

Rob.

 

[spidey07]

Guarantee it's GPON.

You guys are making this way more complicated than it needs to be.

 

[kevnich2]

Your ISP should provide you with the necessary equipment for the WAN portion - just make sure your LAN cabling is atleast cat5e and connected to a GigE switch if you want gigabit speeds - I wouldn't use fiber throughout your house but that's just my opinion.

Must be nice living in a place that's offering gigabit internet speeds - right now I'd be loving speeds over 50mb but again this is the US where consumers are given the shorter end of the stick.

 

[lenkiatleong]

It would be interesting to find out if the rollout of this service is being done with GPON.

If fibre to the home is installed then its almost certain the service provider will give you an ethernet interface. I doubt very much a modem will be required. As JackMDS said the chances are the service provider will also supply the router.

Again as JackMDS suggested the best strategy would be to concentrate on the LAN side. Wired networking will almost always be quicker, simpler, and more reliable than wireless. Wireless makes sense for laptops and some smart phones, but not so much for equipment that sits in the same location most of the time.

For Voip it works realy well with a nice expensive POE (power over ethernet) ethernet switchs that can deal with multiple VLANs on a single ethernet port.

If you want a cheaper option you can use a more basic switch and run ethernet connections for the phones seperately. This will allow you to use VOIP phones, probably SIP based, or ATA adapters. The ATA adapters allow you to connect a normal analogue phone to them. ATA means analogue terminal adapters. All the VOIP phones I have seen that work with POE will also work with a seperate mains adapter.

SIP and working through a router using NAT is another topic. If the service provider recomends, or more likely supplies, the phones/ATA adapters use those. Often the router supplied will have 1 or 2 ATA interfaces (2Wire 2701, Tompson TG784). You may have no real choice on this if you want to use their service.

Rob.

Ya. I suspect that it would be a GPON to offer triple play services. As of today, RSPs here have not reveal any clue to us yet. Will know by mid year.

 

[lenkiatleong]

Your ISP should provide you with the necessary equipment for the WAN portion - just make sure your LAN cabling is atleast cat5e and connected to a GigE switch if you want gigabit speeds - I wouldn't use fiber throughout your house but that's just my opinion.

After digging more on current switches tech from 3com, allied telesis, netgear and fluke website, i am leaning towards option2, i.e., only 2 cables to each room for redundancy purpose and place a Gigabit switch there for easy expansion. I now understand that i could connect like this:

RSP-->Modem/Router-->MainSwitch with 8x ports (Gigabit)-->6x rooms Gigabit Switch-->Equipment.

I reckon that a PC which connects to any Gigabit uplink Switch in any room would be able to enjoy the full bandwidth that i subsribed (100Mbps today).

I have to try buying the correct switch brand and model that render collapsed backbone configuration (option2) negligible with regards to download performance. If RSP continue to offer 100Mbps broadband with FTTH initially then i reckon that most Gigabit uplink switches woud do.

Hope that this is right. Finger cross.

Must be nice living in a place that's offering gigabit internet speeds - right now I'd be loving speeds over 50mb but again this is the US where consumers are given the shorter end of the stick.

On the contrary, i have always envy residents in US where you have countless of HD contents streaming to your living room smoothly.

 

[somethingsketchy]

Option2: Switches in each room
SP-->Modem-->Router-->8port GigabitSwitch-->Switches in rooms

- Not finished researching this method yet.
- Not sure if download speed would be affect by going thru more switches compare to option1. Does anyone encounters any download different after going thru several switches compare to speed if PC is directly connected to router?

Not really. Only if you had a couple dozen, to hundreds of client machines/network devices multiple switches, or even multiple subnets, would you experience some sort of "slowdown" with multiple switches.

If you have all of your switch(es) as Gigabit switches, then you "shouldn't" have any decrease in download speeds (as switches just move packets from one point to another, no routing necessarily done to the packets).

Just a thought

 

[skyking]

The preferred method is a star topology to a single switch with sufficient ports in each room.
It is preferred to overbuild and avoid multiple switches in a simple network such as yours for one reason.
Having only one switch eliminates a troubleshooting step should you ever have a problem with hardware. Granted, switch failures are not common but not having to figure out which device is poisoning the network is still a better solution.
Sometimes you can't anticipate needs and will have to use a satellite switch later on.
I prefer to do it that way rather than have cascaded switches to start with.