Road to Advanced Networking: Part 1 - Planning?
I've finally begun my trek into some more advanced networking. I've already started this a bit but it's time to commit to the more fun stuff.
Here is my current stuff:
Have a terribly messy old diagram that I never bothered to redo yet.
- Edgerouter X running Openwrt
- unifi running Openwrt
- mikrotik 5 port managed switch
- lots of simple switches
- 3 servers
- 4 clients
- 4-5 wireless clients
- POE cams
- a headache of networking
Why the separated switches
My dad has this belief that all of the IP cam traffic will congest the network and be in the way. Makes sense especially since we weren't going to get enterprise grade switches at the time. So we separated it into two different physical networks. What I failed to realize was that due to the crappiness of the cameras and the NVR's ability to process things, the cameras are running at ok bitrates, low framerate, 'good' resolution (which I think is upscaled imo). At the moment, the cameras we have only take up a whopping 1.5MB/s! We are supposed to actually have double the cameras and I hate the terrible quality it is outputting now. Hooray for cheap amazon cameras.
The security on these things are so bad that the separated physical networks worked in our favor anyways since I didn't support VLANs at the time. I had it in my head to be outputting about 10MB/s per camera and not 200-500KB/s but of course I never really did any math at the time. I'll have to do a separate post on just the cameras alone at some point.
How it is now
Over the years, any time we were wiring to new places we installed CAT6 and at some point switched to CAT6A when the prices got cheap and ran out of CAT6. However, with all of the stuff I've learned over the years, I wish I ran conduit everywhere, CAT6A, and OM4 to infrastructure points. To be fair, prices have changed a lot since I installed my first cable in the wall so my only real regret is conduit.
WiFi is a bit of a problem. There is just so much noise even a suburban area. Everywhere where I actually want WiFi, its good for about half of the room and the other half gets spotty. anywhere in the yard is unusable. Interesting since when I originally got it, it was perfect for a good part of the yard as well so I don't know if it degraded but I really just suspect background noise. It's time to move to multiple access points.
My largest regret is really making the convergence point in the garage which is just too hot. Which spawned the 'netbox' project of basically making a fridge. At least I learned a lot of really cool stuff from that project like electronics, signalling, pcb design, etc.
The plan
I want to clean it all up! Here's what I want out of everything.
- 10gig ready
- Conduit for all infrastructure points
- move 2nd floor networking from attic to closet
- 10gig/fiber to critical infrastructure points (between switches)
- 2.5g+ to servers
- router move to opnsense
- Managed switches with VLANs
- Better wifi coverage across the entire property
- various VPN things
Nice to haves
- CAT6A + fiber to all drops
- Conduit to all drops