04 - Network Switches & Ethernet - Home Networking 101
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- čas přidán 3. 06. 2024
- Home Networking 101 is the ultimate beginner's guide to everything you need to know about home networking! In this video, we're coving network switches including where a network switch fits into your network, what to look for when buying a network switch, the different types of switches available, and finally some general switch recommendations for your home network.
How to terminate Ethernet cables: • How to Terminate Ether...
Switch recommendations (affiliate):
5-port unmanaged switches
TP-Link: geni.us/xjzLdw
NetGear: geni.us/nW7y
5-port managed switches
Ubiquiti Flex Mini: store.ui.com/us/en/pro/catego...
8-port managed switches
TP-Link: geni.us/AAUULV
NetGear: geni.us/pIIt
Ubiquiti: store.ui.com/us/en/pro/catego...
Timecodes
00:00 Intro
01:33 What is a network switch?
01:59 Switch infrastructure examples
03:55 Hardwire as much as possible!
05:35 What to look for when choosing a network switch
06:34 Port speeds
07:48 SFP ports
08:41 Managed vs. Unmanaged switches
10:02 Port mirroring
10:24 Link aggregation
10:40 Layer 2 vs. Layer 3 switches
12:16 VLANs
14:21 Power over Ethernet (PoE)
16:29 Ethernet cables
19:42 Network switch recommendations
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Really wish this series wasn't cancelled. 108,000 people probably got really sad seeing there was nowhere else to go after this video ended.
Sorry! They were very difficult to put together and had low views…so ultimately wasn’t worth the effort.
What if I said please?
@@CrosstalkSolutions Thanks to this video I learned about networking, and I now know your company exists
What exactly is the "worth" of views? What's the number you guys settled on to decide if this was or wasn't worth your effort? Not everything has to be about maximizing ultimately meaningless metrics. I guess that's the difference between making things you genuinely want to share as opposed to just making "content" for the widest possible audience.
@@CrosstalkSolutions
That's why you do in-video ads, link to products you get a cut from and sell merch.
Look at me, I'm an expert influencer now.😂
At any rate, thanks for what you did do, very useful and appreciated.
I've been in IT for 20 years, and it wasn't until 2 weeks ago that I learned about double NAT and port forwarding. Nobody talks about it!
Chris, I marvel at your ability to succinctly explain things and never miss a beat. Really useful content - thanks so much
This video made home networking very easy and understandable. Thank you for being clear and making this easy for someone that didn’t know anything about this type of networking
Awesome series, I learnt so much, thanks a lot ! Please continue it when you get the time to, I think it is a great way to hook people into your channel and have the discover the rest of your content!
Thank you so much.. I just started a job in networking without prior experience..this helps a lot to understand the basic stuff 🙏
Great video, hope you keep this series going
Awesome video!! This video answered so many of my questions! Appreciate the explanations!
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
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.
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.
At my last job we had business broadband but only had 90 Mbps at the front desk computer. Daisy chaining was the problem. Once I was allowed to look into it, I found the computer was connected to a gigabit switch though two 10/100 switches and a mile of cable all coiled up under the counter. After I cleaned things up we were getting almost 600 Mbps.
Great video and masterfully explained.
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.
Explained very well - Thank you
I love these videos, I'm trying to plan my home network out and they are really helpful. My question is: Do you prefer Unify Networks or Omada? Is one or the other more secure? Easier to set up? More cost efficient? There are so many options out there!
Really a shame there arent more. Genuinely most helpful videos ive watched
This was an excellent primer course. Thank you!!
Thanks for the info much needed and helpful!
Enjoying this series and hope you cover Pf Sense at some point. Thank you.
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 👏
I am really unsatisfied with the answer. As my knowledge Switches are just like physical switches. The only difference is they are solid state switches and very fast switching between ports.
what a great explanation! thank you!
Thanks 🙏 so much for all the info. Great vid.
Best ever tutorial man🔥
awesome - well done! thank you
Thank you! This video helped!
Great content 😀
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
I enjoyed this video its very educational....
Please keep the the series going
Excellent Concise
Thank you sir ❤ your a good teacher 🤩
Crosstalk Solution explaining crosstalk.
We have come full circle now.
Well, at least he chose his company name for a valid technical reason. 🙂
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)
For fun and often pointing out errors. 🙂
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.
yeah, cca is sort of bad for ethernet for other reasons also I think
Or worse, copper over steel.
Thanks a good clear summary .Can you add a Nas to a switch after the router , under the TV ?
Chris, thanks for this series! I've also enjoyed your videos on TP-links Omada ecosystem.
If I could make a request, when you get to setting up a managed router, I'd like to see how to setup a router as a whole-house VPN for privacy (not as a server).
If you're worried about the government spying on you, they're going to do it just fine at either end of that pipe.
If you're worried about your ISP spying on you, that is too expensive for them to bother (and this is the only type of spying that a "privacy VPN" could protect you from).
If you're using HTTP for your bank login, find a new bank because everybody in the middle can see what you're doing.
If you're using HTTPS for your bank login, nobody in the middle can see what you're doing anyways.
If you're using Google Chrome to browse the Internet, you just forfeited every ounce of privacy you attempted to gain, because you just gave them access to everything.
tl;dr: There's no such thing as a privacy VPN, and paying money to pipe your traffic somewhere else won't bring the benefit you're looking for.
AWESOME VIDEO
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.
Nice video. I just have one comment. I would never put an RJ connector on a long cable directly. Definitely not when it has a solid copper core. The pins in the connector can't connect to it properly and they usually cause issues after some time. Better to connect these cables to a patchbox or a wall mount using LSA! Then use prefab patchcables.
Great video. I’ve always wondered if that was possible. I used a switch which was easy to setup. My apartment is small so I just ran a cables around the apartment. I’m not a fan of WiFi. It’s unreliable when you live in an apartment and are competing with other WiFi channels. Aside from giving you better WiFi range, is there any other advantage to using a router as opposed to a switch?
Thanks a lot
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.
Shielded cables are also often used indoors.
@@James_Knott key is that extra wire. As a matter of fact, I haven't actually seen an unshielded outdoor cable yet. Now shielded wires indoors... Unless you're editing directly off a NAS/SAN, are unnecessary
@@looseycanon I have come across it in a couple of instances. One was in an apartment building elevator machinery rooms. Another was near mobile radio transmitters. I have also worked with shielded out door rated cable, connecting short haul microwave systems. Also, I haven't worked with any shielded cable that didn't have that wire, in addition to the shield.
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.
So would it be ok to plug two different switches from the router or plug one in then plug another to the core switch
That was good info.! I can imagine if you didn't know that. It would be very helpful. 👍👍
Hi, great videos. I whished, you have made more of these ones 😢
The only thing that some people don't realize is a lot of smart tv's only have 100mb network ports.
Exactly! 4k movies were impossible to watch using a wire connection. In my case only wifi allowed smooth playback (my TV has a wifi 5 adapter). The TV is from 2019, maybe now the situation is better :)
That's certainly the case with the IPTV boxes my cable company provides.
What Ethernet speed do Apple TV have?
@@shred3005 Should have 1g I dont't own 1 I am 99% they have 1g.
What would you recommend for adding wired ethernet to each room via a switch from the attic?
12:05 if my numbers come up, i intend to create a network in my new house where layer 3 would be very useful.
16:14 my unifi 8-port switch can do passive PoE.
Please make a video on ISP setup, how one can start own ISP, what they have to need, install, and give services.
you remind the story of the guy in Arabia who had 700+ people from his town connected to his make shift ISP because the main ISP was too lazy to extend their range into the neighborhood.
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
Thank you ❤
excellent
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.
Hear hear.
Avoid CCA at all costs.
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?
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?
If its a simple layer 2 switch (like most consumer level switches), there's nothing in them (hardware/software) that would send your data anywhere else. The way switches work is by forwarding frames only to the intended destination. That's it.
There are more advanced switches that have management interfaces and more features, but those are not common in most home networks. In theory, those can be compromised. Though improbable, it is more likely that a device on your network would get hacked rather than your network switch.
There is no easy way to tell unless you're running network monitoring software and trying to figure out where your devices connect to.
@@JJFlores197 I really appreciate your response. I am assuming your response was regarding an L2 Unmanaged switch? My question came from a deal I saw for a MokerLink (Chineese Company) 5 Port 2.5 Gigabit, Web Managed L2 Network Switch. This is listed as an L2 switch, in your writeup you mention “more advanced”, would this managed switch be in the "more advanced" category or are you talking about L3 switches?
Packet capture.
Connect a computer to a port and monitor the traffic. If you don't know what you're looking at it won't help, but the general premise is that some network engineer somewhere has done this test on this switch and written a blog post about it if something nefarious is going on. A single verifiable incident is enough to destroy an entire company, so if the business has been open for a year it's probably safe.
@@adeadfishdied thank you very much for your response and insight. Much appreciated!
can you really trust cables rated to cat 6 or even cat 7 cables sold cheaply? also, tp link, since they are not the US, can there be vulnerabilities?
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?
Can I use my tv connected to a Poe port? Or Poe port is made for ap and phones only
Chris, nice video but you did not cover Ethernet hubs. Are they still available or are all inexpensive devices now switches? Am I right in saying that all switches in your video determine the destination of each piece of data in the traffic and selectively route data to only the one computer that requires it?
Network hubs have been irrelevant in networks for more than 10 years. They're just obsolete and have poor performance since all the traffic is sent to all ports whether or not its supposed to go to other ports. Network switches only forward frames to their intended destination. So if you have a network of 5 PCs: PC-1 through PC-5 and PC-2 wants to send data to PC-4, the switch receives this data and only sends it to PC-4. A hub would take that data and send it to every single port on the network. That is inefficient and largely why hubs are obsolete.
@@JJFlores197 Thanks for the clarification!
How are VLAN address spaces supposed to related to subnets?
8:20 - any benefits with the different connectors?
Mostly the differences have to do with the distances you can run the cables - fiber for example can go much further than copper. The other thing is that fiber cables are not as vulnerable to electrical issues like power surges and lightning strikes.
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.
You'll see a plastic divider in a Cat 6 cable that actually segregates the twisted pairs to reduce crosstalk. 5e doesn't have that, it only has the four pairs & a pull cord.
16:20 So is it therefore safe to assume that any dumb PoE switch (i.e. unmanaged) is at least smart enough to not send power to a device that doesn't need it?
I have a 16 port managed switch without PoE , so I need to buy a small PoE switch to hook up and power 2 or 3 security cameras. Obviously this needs to supply power to the cameras but NOT to the uplink port back to the 16 port managed switch - or much worse to the NIC in my server if I connect the PoE switch direct to my NAS.
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! 😢😮
if i plug my pc and Pi into my switch my reverse proxy's do not work, if i plug the pc into the router direct and the Pi into the switch the reverse proxy's work, any idea what would cause that?, it's a small home network
Should an unmanaged switch always be after a router?
Cat 5e was re-classified by the IEEE to support 2.5Gbps, not just 1Gbps.
For what distance? Those specs we've been following for years are generally for 100M or 328 feet. Of course, you can run higher speeds for shorter distances.
I have coaxial cable running through my house, how can one use network switches with that. Obviously, I am a novice.
Hardwired = full duplex Wireless = half duplex. Also, can you do vlans for data and voip
While WiFi is techically hald duplex, it switches so fast it appears as full duplex. I come from a telecom background and decades ago, you could actually see the difference.
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
Typically yes - VLANs are only possible on managed switches, though there may be some unmanaged switches that can *pass* VLAN traffic even though you can't configure them.
A managed switch is different than a layer 2/3 switch. Managed vs. unmanaged just means if the switch is 'dumb' (unmanaged, no configuration, just passes traffic) or 'smart' (managed, usually with an onboard GUI, or could be a central GUI for configuration like UniFi or TP-Link Omada).
An unmanaged switch is typically layer 2 only - I'm not aware of any layer 3 unmanaged switches...layer 3 basically means the switch is also a router, so without a configuration interface of some sort, that's not really possible.
Hope that helps!
Looks like an LTT desk pad :)
how do you make Vlans for like security cameras blue iris?
Do these switches exist?
An input from my Ethernet cable modem and a second backup input from a wireless 5G modem via Ethernet?
You need a router that supports 2 WAN links AND WAN failover. Switches won't help you at all in this particular case.
@@JJFlores197 thanks for your reply, I’ll now google your answer to understand what a WAN link is and if it works for a how office during a video conference , I really appreciate it that you took the time to reply
Hypothetically, would a single 48-port switch or two 24-port switches be preferred if a typical home network requires 40 network jacks.
I would prefer 2 24 port switches because if one of them dies, you’re not dead in the water.
@@CrosstalkSolutions On the other hand, you have the bottleneck between switches.
i just hardwired my roku tv and was sad to see the tv's port caps out at only 91Mbps
Yep. A lot of TVs only have 10/100 Mbps ethernet. That should still be plenty fast for most use cases.
Have you moved away from reviewing Ubiquiti products these days? Am noticing less videos from you especially around the Gen 5 product range.
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.
The newest generation Enterprise switches are all in a single line - I like it better that way.
Your film make me "茅塞頓開"！
I cannot find episode 2 or 3
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?
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.
Stop providing a platform for overseas spam / scam / robocallers!!!
Beware as this is their primary business! If you receive a call from originating from Peerless, it’s likely a scammer!!