In 2014, I spent a lot of time researching and implementing a new home-network. I wanted a network that could really help me achieve anything without being held back. I’m really happy with the results of those efforts and they’re still paying off. Anywhere in the world, I can VPN into my home and access any piece of data I’ve ever saved or created and I have a very reliable wireless & wired connection with packet inspection at the router level that sniffs out malware / viruses and protects me from myself when I accidentally click a BuzzFeed link. Finally, no matter where I am on-premise, all of my Apple devices can talk to each other and backup their data every hour.
These two articles will catch you up on my 2014 setup – [1] [2]
It really is a wonderful thing but I am moving to a new house so I started looking at ideas to improve upon the weaker areas of my setup.
Luckily, in my old house the guy I was renting from was in Information Technology for a living and he understood my requests and supported me. Now that I’m moving out after 2 years, he’s purchasing a great-deal of the equipment that I installed. He now has an apartment that is fully wired with Ethernet with a server rack, switch, two Unifi Access points, a Cisco router and plug-n-play if he buys his own Comcast modem (which he has). I’m really happy he offered to buy some of my gear because truthfully, they were all things I planned on selling anyway.
These parts from my 2014 home network are being retired:
- Cisco ISR 2811
- Cisco Gigabit Switch
- 12 U Rack mount
- Two Unifi 2.4Ghz APs supporting 802.11b/g/n
I’ve replaced them with:
- Ubiquiti Networks – ERPOE-5 – EdgeRouter POE
- NETHER ProSAFE 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Desktop Switch (GS108NA) (replaced the TP-Link pictured above that was DOA)
- Ubiquiti Networks UniFi AC LR AP Enterprise Wi-Fi System (UAP-AC-LR)
A few things are happening with this new setup. Less power use, simpler network topology, I can forgo the need for a server-rack since none of these require a rack-mount setup, I can use the Unifi APs without a power injector and finally, I have much faster wireless access.
The old Unifi APs were capped at 802.11n and these support 802.11ac in both the 2.4 and 5Ghz spectrum. Their software is much improved with a maximum throughput of 1300 Mbps and a much longer range with more antennas. I bought two of them, one facing east and the other west so both sides of the house have powerful WiFi at all corners. The EdgeRouter POE was hard to setup but is really powerful and the switch, well it’s just an unmanaged switch but it’s connected to the iMac and every other media device in the house that doesn’t have a WiFi connection. Before, I needed a huge 24-port switch because the WiFi was basically only good enough for mobile phones and tablets. Now, with the new Unifi APs, WiFi is actually pretty darn fast, even for streaming 4K content and Time Machine Backups.
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By the end of this year, I will be replacing my Synology with the Synology DS1515+ and the recently announced WD Red 8TB drives because I only have 500 megabytes left of free space on my Synology and it has become an integral part of my daily computing life. Once that migration happens, I’l be selling my current Synology if any readers are interested in a used model.
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I don’t have any more changes planed for my tech this year. Perhaps I buy an external 27” 5K monitor for my new iMac or finally add a sub-woofer to my AudioEngine A5 speakers? I know for sure that I’d like to get a subwoofer for Heather’s home theatre system that I helped her setup. She’s only running 5 channels now and a subwoofer is a logical next step to help sound-quality.
For now, I’m really happy with the home network. It’s incredibly well done for an amateur like me and I’ll keep tweaking it in the coming weeks to get everything perfect.