Over the years, my home LAN has grown to support many devices

[G+_William Burlingame]

Over the years, my home LAN has grown to support many devices. My system has grown slowly and I didn’t foresee how many devices would eventually be added. As new devices were added, I would simply add a new switch when all the ports on an existing switch were used. I currently have a half dozen switches. I have switches feeding switches. Of course that is causing bottle necks on my system. I would like to replace as many as possible with a larger switch. Perhaps a 24 or 48 port switch. I see used 10 GB, 48 port switches at prices less than $100 on Amazon. In order to replace some of the switches without doing a lot of rewiring, I was thinking about using couplers to connect existing cables to a new larger switch. Nearly all my cables are CAT 6. Any suggestions would be appreciated. While the larger switches have management capabilities, it is currently beyond my skill to take advantage of that. Perhaps I could add that skill later.

[G+_Black Merc]

10-100mbs?

[G+_Shooter_FPV (Shooter_FP]

If you're talking about the female/female couplers to link 2 cables together, I'd not use them. I've only had to use them temporarily, and even then I've always had dropouts. Maybe I've always been unlucky but I would just try to get longer cords or make your own.

[G+_John Sullivan]

Just curious, but why are not some of those devices wireless?

[G+_Shooter_FPV (Shooter_FP]

For me, I try to wire up whatever I can, just for speed/reliability sake. Of course I can't wire up my phones and tablets, but I like wired better, when I can do it.

[G+_Juscelino Acevedo]

Can you please clarify where all of these switches are locate? In different closets in different locations/floors? How many locations? What types of devices are plugged into these switches?

[G+_Black Merc]

If your NOT running gigabit lan then your plan may work... Electrically speaking each cable only uses two of the four pairs, so... Two 100mbit devices pre cable. It would work but, i'd only employ this method if i had no other choice.

Imho upgrade switches that you have to gigabit. All the 100mbit devices should not be able to clog that 'pipe'.

[G+_Pat Hacker]

O

[G+_William Burlingame]

I have a home built in 1952 with plaster over metal lathe and a detached garage. I have a basement and partially finished attic. I have two wired desktops, a wired HTPC, a laptop that I sometimes used wired, two Chromecasts, a ROKU, 10 IP cameras, 3 Raspberry Pis (2 wired), an Echo Dot, a Google Home, a Logitech Hub, 3 WIRED AC routers in bridge mode (one on each floor to extend WiFi), a wired NAS, a wired printer, a wired scanner, three Ethernet over powerline (EOP) devices, a wired Ooma VOIP unit, smart phones and tablets. I installed the additional WiFi routers before consumer Mesh came on the market. I now get pretty good WiFi around the house and see no need to switch to Mesh. I’m having a problem with frame rates on higher resolution IP cameras. Two of the cameras are WiFi and two are connected via EOP. The others are wired. I don’t get a reliable WiFi signal in the detached garage, so I use EOP there.

[G+_Black Merc]

If i am reading this right, your pushing high bitrate video over eop? Eop cannot sustain high bandwidth. Further more, if you are using one camera to host the rest(especially over eop) you will most assuredly get frame loss due to connection capabilities.

I would find a way to run a gigabit line to replace the eop in addition to the gig switch upgrade. Using the gig 'pipe' as a backbone the frame rate problem should clear up.

[G+_William Burlingame]

The two EOP cameras are only 640x480 as are the others, except for one. The exception is a 1080 HD camera and is wired, but I have the most framerate problems with it. I don't have a problem with the framerate on the 640x480 cameras. All the switches are gigabit. If it was easy to run a cable to the detached garage, I would have done it before I bought the EOP devices. All of the cameras are independent of each other.

[G+_Black Merc]

The only thing left i can think of is cable problems/damage.

[G+_Raymond Wishart]

Just beware that most large switches are loud. They where made to be in a data center or utility closet, not on a desk. If you use one VLAN configuration is pretty simple.

[G+_Juscelino Acevedo]

William Burlingame you have to remember that you have devices in bridged mode, WiFi extenders, and EOP. It also sounds like you have a lot of new technologies (Roku and Raspberry Pi) connected to older wiring/wireless. These configurations cut your advertised (wired or wireless) bandwidth in half. I know that you have put a lot of work into your network, but you will benefit from a meshed wireless network, and it may not be as expensive as you may be assuming. Especially, to get rid of frustrations.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Sound like you have a great setup of equipment. Are all these cables run to a central location already, or is your question about extending them to a central switch?

 

If they're already at a central location, I'd just put them on a patch panel and be done with it. You can run patch cables to your new switch.

If they're all at remote locations and you need to extend the cables, use jacks and plugs for best results. If you can, put small patch panels at those locations too and short patch cables to connect the original wires to the extended wires - if that makes sense.

 

Monoprice will probably have your best price for patch panels and I've been happy with the few that I've got from them.

 

12-Port Cat 6 for $15 (USD + shipping)

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=7304

[G+_Juscelino Acevedo]

Ben Reese I completely agree with your idea, but the way that William Burlingame describes it, I got the impression that everything is all over the place. I did not get the impression that there is a central location. Otherwise, that's an extremely easy fix.

[G+_William Burlingame]

They are not at a central location. I would like to eliminate some of the switches to wired devices. My WiFi seems to work fine with by using the wired AC routers in bridged mode. I typically get more than the 150 Mb down that I subscribe to. I use several speed tests to confirm that. The plaster over metal lathe makes it difficult to wire. If I were to start anew, it would be different, but this system has grown in a piecemeal fashion over the years. The cost to start all over and do it the way it should be done would break my budget. I am retired and living on a fixed income.