Last week, we talked about the Gateway that I’m using once I move into the new house. Well, two years after I moved in. I did have a 4-port network on the old Gateway, and it had 8 ports.
Old Network Switch
In the old house, I only had to deal with an 8-port switch, plus the 4 on the router. That would be a total of 12. It was fine. I think I switched out to a 12-port one, plus the 4 on the router.
So the question is, will this be enough for the new house?
New Switch
From the moment I moved into the new house, I knew I would need more ports than in the old house. I talked about the new house networking before. The new house has a total of 9 upstairs. So you are thinking the eight-port would work for you. HA! HA!
I have a 24-port Netgear switch. (These are from Amazon)
These are from my setup.
You might be thinking, man, live Gadget guy, are you running a business for all those ports? Nope, just a home in the present time.
Use
Yes, I have most of them being used. I have added tubing to my house so that I can add more cables. It isn’t just the 9 network cables I have upstairs. I have NAS servers, outside lighting, and solar monitoring. One of the ports is used to send the network out to the house from the Gateway.
I likeGatewayitch, and I have used this from day one, well, OK, maybe not from day one, but within the first three or four days. I moved into the house on Mar 6 and by Mar 7 this was on order. I had a few days off to unpack and get everything up and running. So, yeah, I use it, and it works well for what I use it for.
Snob
Yeah, you could call me a Netgear snob, but if you like something, then why change? But I am not a snob, just someone with loyalty.
Patch Panel
Unfortunately, this isn’t a NetGear one; it is a 24-port TrendNet patch panel. I use this to funnel cables into a single point, then connect the cable to the switch. Two images are from Amazon, and two are from my network.
You might think, “Why not just connect the connections directly to the switch?” Well, I did that for a couple of years, and it worked fine. But FOR ME, the patch panel works as a middleman, keeping the network running smoothly and looking good. Like me!!
You have all the cables coming in and going behind everything. Then you have another cable connecting the cable in Front to the switch. Yeah, it might be a lot of cable and more money. It is, but it makes things run smoothly.
You can take a cable from Port 14 on the patch panel and move it to Port 6. Group all the cameras, TVs, and other connections together so you know where they go.
For me, I have them labeled so that cable 1 is my office, so I know that if it is in Port 1 of the patch panel, then it is my office. So I can move that over a 10 GB switch, and that will make my office part of the 10 GB network. The only thing I had to do was unplug the cable from the switch and move it over to the 10 GB switch. The patch panel stayed in place, the switch stayed in place, and the only thing that moved was the cable between the patch panel and the new switch.
Hopefully, you followed that.
Next Week
Access Points
