If you don’t want to read my nonsense, scroll down to the bottom.
It’s been a long time since I setup my home network. My last router was the R7000 which served its purpose for about nine years. This time, before following the same setup I have done for the last 15+ years, I was curious about the latest trends and ensure I don’t miss out on something new. Everything that can be wired, is wired. I set certain devices on the network with a static IP (video scalers, Memcard pros, raspberry pi’s, arcade units, game consoles(do they still need static IP addresses these days to allow with specific ports to the forwarded?) I have a bunch of gigabit switches, primarily in one room that houses most of my stuff.
Why am I looking into changing?
About a year ago we changed to Verizon fios and they gave me a router, which I scoffed at since “I don’t need the router my service gives me for free” (and yeah, this one is actually a free one, I declined it and told the installer I don’t want one and he left it) a G3100.
After my R7000 kicked the bucket at 2am after a poorly done firmware update - oops, I needed a new router and almost ordered one on Amazon, but figured I would use the free one in my home until I did research. I was immediately blown away. How crap this was so much faster than my other router. I was getting download speeds 5-10 times faster. The only issue it apparently can only do 10 static addresses, which is not enough.
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This prompted me to see what was available these days. I saw 6ghz networks? CAT8? I didn’t even know we had CAT7?! Mesh networks (even though I really don’t care about wireless, it can be bothersome to drop my network right outside my house) would this help my small devices receive a signal tucked away behind a cabinet? My needs are about 80 or so devices at a time, let’s say about 20 devices with static ip addresses, but that could be a lot more. My plan is the gigabit (900ish Mbits) are there faster switches than a gigabit, and does it matter? I do have a network that is not attached to the router, that simply has older consoles hooked up to shared networked drives for game images.
Anyway, what router do you all recommend? Do I care about mesh? Should I upgrade switches and wires? What is the deal!? What’s the new and upcoming network trends that everyone is excited about?
Firstly, static IPs are a PITA. do yourself a favor and set up DHCP reservations for the devices you want to have static addresses.
Second, the main trend is deintegrating routing and WiFi. So get a device that's just a router: pfSense, mikrotik, firewalla, ubiquity, etc. Then put up Wi-Fi access points, usually multiples, to get better full-home coverage for wireless devices. If the APs have a wired connection to the router (wired backbone) this is best, rather than sharing the uplink via a dedicated wireless channel or a mesh network. Ubiquity, tp-link Omada, ruckus, Aruba instant-on, are all popular options I see recommended here.
Advanced trends: creating segmentation between your iot devices and main network for enhanced security. This typically involves creating and configuring vlans, which may require upgrading any unmanaged switches you have to managed/smart switches.
Yes! I’ll definitely look into this. Although, my r7000 handled static great, when there was a problem it was exhausting trying to get it to work. Which always seemed to end up with me rebooting it. :/ My setup is an old android tablet with a webpage saved for each scaler. When I want to change any settings for my genesis scaler, I click on that and change the settings. And I can quickly do this for all of my scalers. I had this on my phone, but I have 9 of them and sometimes they would get closed or need to be reopened, or sometimes I just didn’t have my phone next to me while I was gaming. If I don’t want them set to a specific IP, I will lose my ability to open that specific unit. (Although, since my new router hides its settings for static, I haven’t had this for the past couple of weeks)
I'd still recommend reserved IPs instead of static IPs, for that case, although, it sounds like local DNS would also meet your need. Firewalla will give you local DNS out of the box. Other firewalls might require you to configure dnsmasq aliases yourself.