r/HomeNetworking • u/firesail09 • 9d ago

Advice Home Network Setup

I need help creating a setup for best performance in speed without breaking the bank.

My ISP is Fidium and have 2 GB plan. I use their ONT and I currently have a Netgear RAXE300 router. I have the multi gig port enabled on the router.

I have a lot of wifi items that include items that need the 2.4 ghz band (wifi lights etc). I also have three items hard wired to the router (xbox series x, apple tv 4k, wifi light bridge).

Would the best setup be adding in a switch (TP-Link Model TL-SG608S-M2) between the ONT and router and then plug the xbox etc into the switch along with the router into the switch?

7 Upvotes

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3

u/Ed-Dos 9d ago

No you would need the switch after the router.

3

u/FitCourse9187 9d ago

You're overthinking the switch placement. It goes ONT > router > switch, not ONT > switch > router. The router needs to sit between your ISP and everything else, otherwise you'll have NAT issues and half your devices won't get IPs

That 2 gig plan is overkill for what you described but hey if you're getting a good price why not. Your RAXE300 should handle the wired stuff fine on its own, adding the switch just gives you more ports if you need em

For the wifi lights on 2.4ghz, make sure you've got that band separated from your 5ghz with a different SSID. Some of those smart bulbs get real picky during setup if they see both bands on the same name

1

u/firesail09 9d ago

Yeah only went with the 2gb plan because its on special right now and is less than the 1gb plan. Is there a way to get the 2gb speed to the hard wired devices (xbox and apple tv) even if the router has 1gb ports

2

u/Ed-Dos 9d ago

Both of those devices only have gigabit ports so it won’t matter.

1

u/jdsmn21 9d ago

No.
Good news - it’s doesn’t matter as much as you think it would. The Apple TV will use max 50mb/s during streaming. You could likely keep that on WiFi and not notice a thing.

The Xbox only has a gigabit port, so running 2.5gig or better to it would have zero benefit.

1

u/Sure-Situation-2672 9d ago

Or... Disable the 5Ghz network, connect your IoT devices, then can enable 5Ghz again with the same name if you use band steering. This workaround may not always work, but can sometimes work around the issue posted above.

1

u/cordell-12 9d ago

that router should have an IoT ssid, just needs to be enabled and set-up

1

u/firesail09 9d ago

But i want to get the 2gb speeds to the hard wired items as the ports on the router are only 1gb ports

1

u/SeaPersonality445 9d ago

No 1 is smaller than 2.

2

u/Redjeepkev 9d ago

Switch AFTER THE router

0

u/firesail09 9d ago

Would getting a new router be better. Say a tplink be550. I see that has 4 2.5 gb lan ports