I have been following the “Ethernet Switch and Cables Mania” with interest and was wondering what type of home networks people on here are running? I recently got a QB2 and ran some cables across the house before it arrived as I prefer wired to wireless networking for anything that isn’t designed to be handheld!
I have a small wall mounted rack in the garage with an HP Procurve 1410 16G switch, a Synology DS214j (with 2x 2tb Western Digital Reds in Raid 1 or SHR as Synology insist on calling it) and a Hitachi USB drive (to keep backups of my music locally). A fairly old rubbish plusnet router with the wifi disabled. You can only see the POE injector for it, but I have a Ubiquiti Unifi AP AC Pro located roughly in the middle of my house. All the cabling is Cat6 (solid core to the faceplates/patch panel) and just el cheapo pre made ones for all the patching and connections etc. I have a second 5 port Netgear GS305 switch behind the TV as I only ran 3 runs of cable to the living room but I need 6 ports and I’m not prepared to take up the floors again!
I probably could have gone cat5e, but cat6 isn’t actually much more these days. Anything better than cat6 seemed unnecessary for what I’m using it for.
Just a hyperthecial question to end with… Would using any fancy ethernet cables produce any results? I doubt anything noticeable on a mu-so, but surely using them on a home network on a higher end system would be negated by the standard wiring I have under the floor etc?
And on that head scratcher, over to you. How is your home network setup?
Starting from the top…
Linksys 1900ACS router
Cisco gigabit switch.
8 series i5 NUC running Roon
2 x Synology, 1 x Qnap NAS for backups only
Virgin media router in modem mode.
Off to the left, just out of shot, fibre media converter.
I have a rather basic setup by Forum standards. An 8-port unmanaged Netgear switch. A loooooong run of Cat5 from the living room where my ND555 lives to the room 2 floors higher where the network hardware lives. The nas, Roon Nucleus, etc. all hard-wired to said switch. Apple TV wired to the switch, as we watch most of our streamed video in that same room (LG OLED tv).
For wifi, the wifi on the home router from my fibre supplier is turned off, in favor of wifi supplied by an Apple Airport Extreme, with a second Extreme (actually a Time Capsule) 2 floors lower to extend the network.
With this setup I get totally suitable service, including streaming video over wifi to an Amazon Firestick one floor below that Time Capsule.
For these reasons I’ve still not ‘modernized’ my home wifi. I did buy a used Cisco 3560 switch for little money, but I’ve not yet done a factory reset on it which I want to do before slotting it in. I’ve not quite figured out how.
Sky Q Hub router.
2 x Cisco 2960 switches
Synology 216+ (WD Red discs) NAS for my local music store
Synology 216 (WD Red discs) NAS for my photo/home video store
Various USB hard drives (stored elsewhere) for backups
Standard cat 6 ethernet cabling throughout
I have ethernet connectivity to two of my music streaming devices:
Linn Klimax DS/1 (System 1) and Sonore microRendu/Mytek Brooklyn+ (System 2)
and wi-fi connectivity to a 3rd & 4th streaming device:
chromecast/Marantz NA7004 (System 3) and a Naim Muso Qb in my kitchen.
All work pretty flawlessly and I have no inclination to experiment with ‘boutique’ ethernet cables - although I may one day give Blue Jeans cat6 or 6a cables a try (with no real expectation of any significant sound quality change.
In basement in a rack: modem to Pakedge gigabit router to 24 port pakedge unmanaged switch. The QNAP NAS connected to the switch with cat6 patch. Then very long over 50 foot run to hifi room from switch with cat6 directly to rear of ND555. No special Ethernet cables all just regular cat 6. Three WAPs connected to the switch to 3 areas of house for good WiFi throughout. Also usb drive to NAS for scheduled weekly backups
When I first had n ND5XS I had an NSA325 NAS (cheapest NAS I could find - worked fine but very acoustically noisy), connected to a switch (D-Link or Linksys, <1m away), ND5XS attached to same switch (~2m away). That was the music part of the network. Another cable from the switch went to a wall socket connected in-wall to a central house switch (10m) and that connected to the broadband modem/wireless router and cables to other rooms in the house linking computers, TV, etc.
Later changed the NAS for a Mac Mini running Serviio acting as a NAS, otherwise same setup.
Now my music doesn’t stream across a network at all: Audirvana runs on the Mac Mini where my music is stored, as a renderer, feeding my DAC via USB. Network connection for backup to NAS in another room is via a switch 2m away to which is also connected an Apple TV, and 14m in-wall cabling to the main house switch as above.downloading new music,
All network cables were standard ethernet UTP, Belden I think.
Data cupboard
Virgin Media Superhub 3 in modem mode.
Ubiquiti Unifi USG router
Ubiquiti Unifi 8 x port 4x Poe switch 4 x no poe
Switch feeds 2 X Unifi AC wireless access points, 2 X Cisco 2960 in two different rooms, Nas in data cupboard and Philips hub.
Mixture of generic Cat6 and cat5e cables.
Living Room
Cat socket on wall feeds a Cisco 2860 8x1gb in turn this feeds TV, virgin TiVo, Nvidia Shield TV, PS4 , Naim Atom and Rock i7 Roon server. Naim, Roon server and switch all fed by Blue Jeans cable. The rest generic supplied cables.
Dining Room
Cat socket to Cisco 2960 8x 100mb, Fire TV , Bluesound Node 2i and Headphone setup in the Living Room as it’s on opposite side of the wall. All generic cables.
Infrastructure wiring is a Hodge podge of cat 6 and 5e with some special external cable on one run as it has to go outside to get to living room end with the hifi.
I have a custom router with untangle on, connected to 24port unifi switch which in turn has 3 smaller switches coming off it. Wifi is handled by 3 Unifi AC pro, access points.
Fibre box is in a cupboard in the lounge. Long run of internally wired Cat 6 to the Telecom router in the office/media downstairs. Standard Cat 6 cable to a Netgear switch, with standard cables to Core and Nova in the same room. Second long run of internally wired Cat 6 from the router back to the other side of the lounge to an Apple Timecapsule, with short Cat 6 stock cable to NDX2 and main system (upgrading this last cable to a Chord Shawline soon, then will do the same for the short runs to the Core and Nova next year based on dealers IT guru’s recommendation).
