Networking and Storage

With the new house now half way complete. It's getting to that time where I now need to decide on network infrastructure design and hardware choices. My aim with the design is to keep its simple and to keep with my philosophy of set and forget.

I work in the I.T industry and the last thing I want to do when I come home is troubleshoot and tinker. Now with regards to network point locations, I've kept things to a fairly simple design and put points in key locations around the house where consistent bandwidth is required. Such as Theatre, Family room, Study, upstairs common area and upstairs closet (I'll get to that later).

I plan on using 4 Linksys WRT1900AC Dual Band Wireless AC 1900 Routers around the home for complete wireless coverage; 2 downstairs, and 2 upstairs. They will provide ample wireless coverage around the home and expand on the network locations mentioned above.  

My Justification is that these APs are simple to use. Support Multiple SSIDs (inc Guest Ids) and provide enough bandwidth to support multiple wireless devices; Phones, Tablets, Cameras etc. 

They also support custom firmware if for whatever reason I get bored and decided to get my geek on.

Now with regards to the network point in the closet upstairs, i plan on using that link as a backbone line for a future patch panel / switch i plan on putting in there so i can run some extra cabling post handover upstairs. At the end of the day, Cat6 over such a short distance will support a 10g link if i had the switching to support it. So it will be fine.

 I did't really see the need in running 24+ network points around the house for every possible device. You'll either end up having half of them not patched or require a fairly large network rack at the termination area. Easier to add edge devices as required in my opinion (also the above ap allows the status Leds to be completely disabled if required - such as in the theatre room). 

My recommendation to people building new homes to allow for flexibility and wireless connectivity. 

Now storage is my current limitation that I have and will be looking for a NAS / Cloud Solution long term. My plan is to start off with a Synology DS1815+ 8-Bay Scalable NAS with 8x4TB drives for 32TB of raw storage. The device allows for link aggregation of the 4 network ports to get extra bandwidth to the network as well as integration with cloud providers and virtualisation. 

The device can also be expanded down the track if required.

I have a set of HP Microservers that i'll combine with the NAS to provide some extra capabilities and aid with my side business i run. All in all, should provide a low running cost solution (the HP Microservers cost next to nothing to run 24/7).

It's easy to get carried away when designing a home network. My first design of a home I was planning on building had way to many physical network points. The fact is, Wireless technology is improving year on year. My Current laptop equipped with a AC capable wireless card connects at around 800mbits a sec to the closest AP. More then fine for streaming HD video of youtube etc. 

At the end of the day, I want my guests to be able to come visit and connect to the net without me having to touch their devices and provide a seamless user experience for my family.