04 - Network Switches & Ethernet - Home Networking 101

That was good info.! I can imagine if you didn't know that. It would be very helpful. 👍👍

i just hardwired my roku tv and was sad to see the tv's port caps out at only 91Mbps

Is there anyway of easily working out whether cable is Cat 5 or Cat 6 if it’s not labelled?
In 2007 we renovated a house and the electrician Ethernet cabled the entire house. It’s through the walls with RJ45 ports in most rooms leading back to a data box where I have an 24 port unmanaged switch. But I’ve pulled some of the cable out of the wall and it’s not labelled. I can’t remember whether he said it was Cat 5 or Cat 6. Thar was 16 yrs ago and Cat 6 did exist.

Great segment, all of your explanations are very easy to follow. When you brought up Port Mirroring, a security question came to mind. There are so many manufacturers or Network switches, some appear to be USA companies, and others we have no idea where they are from. I have seen videos where the same electronics appears to be in different packaging with different company names.

Question: How secure are Network switches, and how can we know if any of our network traffic (personal data) is being “forwarded” without our knowledge to a person or company to be used for nefarious purposes. Is there a way to determine if this is being done?

Thank you for sharing such helpful information. Im collecting eqipment now to build my home network. I have a question. My router (Asus) router is setting the IP addresses for the attached devices....okay, got it. What does the router do when i connect an 8 port switch? Does it give addesses for the remainig 7 ports? Thank you so much.

What would you recommend for adding wired ethernet to each room via a switch from the attic?

I have a tmobile home internet unit. Can i hook up a network switch for the ps5, firestick and pc.
It can be any 5 port switch. That easy, plug and play?

Should an unmanaged switch always be after a router?

False, true most modern TV have ethernet, barely any have 1GB connectivity. I have Apple TV with 1GB ethernet connection which is way better then the 100 mbs on my 2023 Insigna 4K TV.

So would it be ok to plug two different switches from the router or plug one in then plug another to the core switch

Your film make me "茅塞頓開"！

If you have a layer 3 or layer 4 network switch can that be connected directly to your modem vs having a dedicated router? So it'll be Modem -> L3 or L4 switch -> AP ...vs... Modem -> Router -> L3 or L4 switch -> AP?

How are VLAN address spaces supposed to related to subnets?

Great video, hope you keep this series going

As a beginner network hobbyist, I would have never known the disadvantages of daisy chaining switches, what the SFP is used for, the advantages of managed switches, layer 2 vs layer 3 switches, and how to protect my LAN by creating VLANs.

Keep up the good work and looking forward to more educational videos 👏

If you have to connect two switches of 4 ports each. Would you recommend connecting the second switch to the first one with a 10GB port, or 1Gb port is sufficient? There is a big difference in price if I buy the one with a 10Gb port. Thank you

Can someone explain the relationship(s) between Layer 3, VLANs and managed/unmanaged switches?

- are VLANs only possible on managed switches?
- is a managed switch also then a layer 3 switch?
- is an unmanaged switch a layer 2 or can it be a layer 3?
- etc etc

Great video and masterfully explained.

Chris, I marvel at your ability to succinctly explain things and never miss a beat. Really useful content - thanks so much

Can two different managed switches use the same VLAN? I'm considering isolating my security cameras on their own VLAN and am currently powering them with two unmanaged POE switches located on different sides of the house. Each switch is connected to my "base switch" which then connects to the router. Could I swap these unmanaged switches for managed ones and have both use the same VLAN so that all cameras are in one VLAN?

Chris,

Do you have a video that details setting up vlans on unifi, specifically like how you talked about secure network for personal devices then another separate vlan network for iot devices. If not please make one, being trying to figure out how to.

A couple of points, sometimes you have to consider physical size or weight when choosing between CAT 5 or 6. CAT 6 is physically larger and heavier than CAT5, making it slightly harder to work with. However, when running cables in a data centre you have to consider the weight of the cables in overhead cable racks. Also, I have found CAT6 patch cords do not fit is some models of conference phone, requiring the use of CAT5 only.

Also, RJ45 plugs should be used with stranded cable, not solid. This is because flexing of the cable can cause metal fatigue in solid wire. The structured cabling spec calls for solid wire cable to be terminated on a socket and stranded on plug. I always use a socket on solid wires and then a short patch cord to the device.

BTW, I have a 5 port managed switch configured as a "data tap" using port mirroring. I keep it in my computer bag, so it's always handy.

Please make a video on ISP setup, how one can start own ISP, what they have to need, install, and give services.

Have you moved away from reviewing Ubiquiti products these days? Am noticing less videos from you especially around the Gen 5 product range.

A few things Chris didn't mention.

The reason, why there are outdoors and indoors cables, lies in insulation. Outdoors cable has extra shielding and one additional wire for grounding purposes. This wire is attached to a special Ethernet connector, which has metallic outer shell and connects to a metallic chassis of the rack or special F-F Ethernet plug, that has grounding wire as an extra attachment. These are typically used, when connecting say a WISP antenna, that's placed somewhere high on a building, like on a chimney.

As to what switches are good for you, price differences between unmanaged switches and managed switches is miniscule for small eight and five port switches these days. TP-Link has very bad reputation, especially for their higher tier managed switches. They can advertise link aggregation, but only support one standard, that is not supported by other devices, so I'd steer clear off them, unless you need fairly vanilla switching, at most to terminate a VLAN on something larger. Their unamanaged five and eight port switches are probably unbeatable in cost to performance category. As for small managed switches, I like to use Zyxel GS1200 series switches. They are dirt cheap and very intuitive to set up, particularly, when you need devices on multiple VLANs. Comparable UniFi switches (the flex line) are more expensive and you need the controller, which should be on separate device (a cloud key G2+ ideally, or you can use UDM series router, which also runs the controller), but the more complex and more advanced needs you have, the more compelling they become, mostly, because you are likely to enter world of UniFi WiFi equipment, which needs that same controller. Particularly interesting switch in UniFi line up is UniFi switch 8 150w. This switch supports both 24v passive PoE, as well as .3af and .3at standards and has two SFP ports, making it ideal core switch for a newtork, that needs to utilize 24v passive PoE on lan side (for instance, sending Internet over WiFi to a workship or separatly built garage).

Finally, what Chris said about designing a network, it is not gospel. There are situations, where a small switch would sit between larger switches, or you can end up daisychaining connection across five hops, because the house being wired was not designed with computer network in mind, or ISP terminated their connection at inopportune place. a few examples
- Daisychaining: House built narrowly along a hallway (fairly common in Europe). In this case, daisychaining from switch to switch makes sense, because eventually you'd be running great many wires to where the ISP terminated their run, if you strictly minimized number of hops. The thing is, even today and even going into the future with symultaneous streaming of video, your bottleneck will not be gigabit ethernet in your switches, but the speed you're buying from your ISP. As long as you will not have a NAS on your own network to store your videoteke, you will not push the network to it's limit.
- Daisychaining: Multigenerational housing. It makes sense to build networks of each family living in the building into their own networks with shared router. If one of the families uses a NAS as videoteke very rarely, purchasing a core switch could be unnecessary expense. The NAS would then be connected to the branch of network, that uses it more often. From the perspective of the other family, they are crossing multiple pieces of networking equipment to access that NAS, whenever they want to watch something from it. The idea behind this setup stems from the fact, that most traffic of the two families is independent of each other and ends in the Internet anyway, hence unnecessity of a unifying switch. This situation can occour also due to working from home. Most routers have five ethernet ports. In failover setup, where one connection serves as backup, two ports are WAN ports, two ports are uplink ports, one for each family, and one port remains for other uses. If this port is used for any purpose other than connecting that NAS, then one of the families is daisychaining into it accross switches and router.
- Daisychaining/small switch between big ones: relay. Very rare occasion in home envioronment. Per standards, limitation for 1 gigabit over Cat5e or Cat6 is 100 meters or 300 feet. A run longer than this can be done, but can either lack speed or stability. Putting a small switch between large ones makes sense, because in this case it serves the function of a signal repeater. Such situation can ocuour, when wiring enclosed courtyard, when the longest run is too long, in which case, adding a switch as a repeater or daisychaining final part of this network is the only way to go.
- Small switch between big ones: A camera hub. it would be wasteful to put a 24 port PoE switch in a place, that only needs to connect three to four cameras. Taking an inexpensive eight port PoE switch and inserting it here will not harm throghput, because cameras don't need that much bandwidth and switch would have been placed here anyway. Their added bandwidth is so small, it will be barely noticable.

Thanks for this... perhaps next one you could go over fiber and all the different options.. different transceivers, cables, wavelengths, advantages/disadvantages, fiber nics,etc

Hypothetically, would a single 48-port switch or two 24-port switches be preferred if a typical home network requires 40 network jacks.

I really would love to know how many people watching this are not beginners, and are just watching it for fun (couldn't be me)

question/reflexion I have is when using Vlan for LOT devices, you often lost access for those devices from sotware agragator like Google home or Appel homekit, you have to start doing some traffic management and sometimes knowing which port an LOT device is using is a bit of a struggle

Hardwired = full duplex Wireless = half duplex. Also, can you do vlans for data and voip

Can someone explain why a mesh router like deco does not allow a signal from a network switch? My deco only works when plugged straight into the cable modem! 😢😮

Cat 5e was re-classified by the IEEE to support 2.5Gbps, not just 1Gbps.

The only thing that some people don't realize is a lot of smart tv's only have 100mb network ports.

Should mention using solid copper vs. copper clad aluminum ethernet cables for POE. POE is DC and more prone to voltage drop with distance. Solid copper is better than aluminum in the POE use case.

Ubiquiti really screwed us when designing that usw pro lol.

Should of had the 24 ports stretch the whole switch, not double up like that on one side.

Crosstalk Solution explaining crosstalk.
We have come full circle now.

I know this is probably opening a can of worms, but could you discuss the difference between CCA (copper-clad aluminum) and solid copper ethernet cables? A novice home user might purchase the cheapest cable off of Amazon and experience performance issues because of their chosen cable.

Great content 😀

So Far I have a R2D2 original Dream Machine. I have 2 flex minis coming tomorrow. I already used the tutorial on vlans to setup a iot and regular vlan. Eventually I want to upgrade to a Dream Machine SE and install a camera system. But its baby step right now. Have been completely redoing my network this week wall mounted my dream machine to get better WiFi coverage of my house and have been running new cables from the new router location to my rack which when don will house my complete network setup and a truenas server(parts inbound to finish this). I started in networking way back in the 90s with BNC networks and have been loving my unifi setup since discovering this channel and learning from it.

I love my Ubiquiti 16 port lite switch and 8 switches.
Heck, I even have multiple Flex poe switches and flex mini switches, and each one is used for certain types of devices.

Flex switches outside for cameras, 16 port switch outside under an eave with no risk of splash from the rain for more cameras as well a high power ptz cameras with poe injectors.

I absolutely love this stuff ^_^

Thanks for the video, I like following along to learn something new.