Building my home network

[Firefighter]

Hey yall, have a few questions as I'm about to build out my home network and want to make sure I'm looking at this correctly. I haven't bought any switches yet.


I'm going to use a small 2x2 coat closet and wire shelving. I have ATT 1gig Fiber mode/router directly into the closet. ( I had to run it under the house for the tech or it would have ended up in a outside wall bedroom. )

I'm going to have the main house network, and a fiber line ran to a chicken coop where I want a poe switch and more cameras.

House will have 8-12 poe cameras, several tvs, several computers ( 2 main and one blue iris ) and maybe some audio systems with data connection.
The chicken coop will have pow switch and a few IP cameras and maybe even an AP for wifi in that part of the yard. Not sure yet. Fiber will be a 165ft pre made with cat6-fiber converter. Im trenching and want the fiber in a conduit next to the 120v which can't normally be done with low voltage. Has to be 12 inch separation but with fiber im good.

Should I have two switches in the house, POE and non POE or just one larger POE switch and not fool with having a 2nd. I was wanting to keep the cctv data on its own switch but I don't know that it's any benefit.

I would like to have a 2nd fiber ran to the front mailbox with another poe switch and a few cameras there as well but not until 2025 summer.

I drew the following network map, and a over view of my home to help it maker sense. The 3rd photo is not mine but what I think I'm going for.

I have two main computers and then I'll have a Blue Iris computer as well







So I'm thinking about using a

TP-Link TL-SG1428PE​

It's got the 2 fiber connections, could I just use that to run the two runs Im thinking about?

 

[wittaj]

It is best to not have your cameras on the same lines as your internet. They'll keep teying to phone home without some additional effort to stop it.

Many with BI do a dual NIC in the computer - one ethernet port for internet on one subnet and the cameras to the other ehternet on a different subnet.

But if you have everything on the same switch you can have isssue. For example, the EdgeRouter X is claimed to be somewhere between 800Mbps to 1Gbps, but you see tests all over where people are only getting in the 700Mbps range.

On my isolated NIC, my cameras are streaming non-stop 400 Mbps. This is full-on, never stopping to take a breath. Even if someone has a gigabit router, over a 3rd of non-buffering 24/7 data will impact its speed.

I would just as soon not have that much video data going thru a device if it doesn't need to. Has to slow the system down.

 

[Firefighter]

It is best to not have your cameras on the same lines as your internet. They'll keep teying to phone home without some additional effort to stop it.

Many with BI do a dual NIC in the computer - one ethernet port for internet on one subnet and the cameras to the other ehternet on a different subnet.

But if you have everything on the same switch you can have isssue. For example, the EdgeRouter X is claimed to be somewhere between 800Mbps to 1Gbps, but you see tests all over where people are only getting in the 700Mbps range.

On my isolated NIC, my cameras are streaming non-stop 400 Mbps. This is full-on, never stopping to take a breath. Even if someone has a gigabit router, over a 3rd of non-buffering 24/7 data will impact its speed.

I would just as soon not have that much video data going thru a device if it doesn't need to. Has to slow the system down.

So Install a Dual NIC in my Blue Iris Computer and have one going to the cctv switch and the other to the main home network switch? Makes sense...

Then the office computers and tvs in the house will be on the main home network switch while isolating the cctv and BI stuff.

Correct?

 

[wittaj]

That is correct

 

[Gimmons]

Interesting idea about using the fiber sff ports to carry the chicken coop / mailbox signals. Those ports are usually used for uplinks to a main switch or router, but I can’t see why you couldn’t use them for a lateral branch. Your uplink will have to run through a normal port, but your switch is probably fast enough that won’t be a problem. Do the coop and mailbox have separate power for the cameras and switch out there?

 

[Firefighter]

Interesting idea about using the fiber sff ports to carry the chicken coop / mailbox signals. Those ports are usually used for uplinks to a main switch or router, but I can’t see why you couldn’t use them for a lateral branch. Your uplink will have to run through a normal port, but your switch is probably fast enough that won’t be a problem. Do the coop and mailbox have separate power for the cameras and switch out there?

Yea I wasn't sure if that would work but since I won't have any other use for the ports why not use them that way and remove one converter needed.

They will. I'm finishing up the coop soon and will be trenching power and water to it so it just needs data and I'd rather do a hard line over a wireless bridge since it's possible. I'll be sending power to the entry and want a couple cams to get plates. Drive entry is about 100ft from front of house and coop is 90ft from the back corner.

 

[Firefighter]

Coop photo. It's 6x8 while the run is 10x20.
I have concerns about a neighbor killing then with a pellet gun so I want cameras on them in addition to wanting cameras on them anyway.

I plan on putting a small box inside the coop to house the switch.

 

[samplenhold]

So Install a Dual NIC in my Blue Iris Computer and have one going to the cctv switch and the other to the main home network switch? Makes sense...

Then the office computers and tvs in the house will be on the main home network switch while isolating the cctv and BI stuff.

You could use VLANs to do the same thing. But I prefer to use a dual NIC setup. It just seems simpler to me. One RJ45 from the motherboard, and the other from a NIC PCIe card. See below.

 

[Flintstone61]

I played around with a 2nd NIC and it just auto disabled the onboard one. After fiddle fucking around for awhile, I just got a VPN working and bagged the Dual NIC setup.
I could have gone with a V-Lan Switch at that point I suppose. But I thought I'd just get the damn thing up and running first and see how things shake out.
I have a separate POE switch in the garage for Cams. cams share a single ethernet cable down to lower level in the house and join to a 4 port gigabit switch in the house and a single ethernet back to my bedroom ( BI Pc) . The 4 port links up to the Verizon Router ( ISP).
But I'm not exactly " doing it right". Dual NIC theoretically makes sense, But I don't have an extra ethernet cable back to my home PC(Blue Iris Machine)

I have however in the past, Used a TP link USB-wifi dongle-ma-Bob to join the Verizon router LAN, ( home network)
and then the Cams in from the garage on a single ethernet cable direct wired to an ASUS router/switch combo linked to BI-PC. ( BI network)
using 192.168.1.xxx
and 192.168.0.xxx

 

[biggen]

I separate my camera LAN from my computer LAN via two different subnets. My router has the ability to assign different subnets/VLANs to each of it's LAN ports. I also have a dedicated POE switch just for the camera LAN. Then I just block the entire camera LAN subnet from access to the internet except for the server where BI is installed. That IP is still allowed to connect to the internet so I can update BI, Windows, etc...

 

[Gimmons]

I have been toying with the idea of getting a quad port card for a low power BI install in a vacation house. It really only needs a couple of cameras, so with a quad card, I could eliminate the switch, and put each camera on its own subnet. The cameras would have to be powered by wall adapters instead of POE.

 

[biggen]

By the time you buy a 4 port NIC and power adapters you might as well just buy a 4 or 8 port PoE switch…

 

[Gimmons]

Probably.