Hi We have cat7a around the house, and a bunch of aps.. These give me adequate wifi coverage, but I'm wondering about the ability of the superhub3 to handle any more devices. I have two Poe switches already which work well. Any ideas of a good option? Happily get some used enterprise stuff if cheap so long as relatively quiet and has 10g sfp+.
Mikrotik, Unifi, draytek and pfsense all worth looking into - which one is right for you is more down to personal preference for what/how you want to manage it, rather than one being "better" than another. Do you actually need 10g on your router? I assume you're using Virgin based on reference to a superhub, and I didn't realise they had speeds in excess of 1Gbit. IMO don't bother with used "enterprise" kit - generally too many caveats: noise, manageability, supportability and if you're lucky you may even find certain capabilities locked behind a support entitlement.
If you start looking at wifi6 check that they have a 2.5gb port on them to actually use all of the speed wifi6 enables, hint Unifi doesn't (And yeah I'm using unifi and waiting for the refresh there)
VMs Gig1 is in excess of 1Gb but you can't get it off the device as it only has 1Gb ports....Doh! Some people have suggested it will bond two ports. I think the VM hub can handle quite a lot of devices, unless you are over a hundred I'd imagine there is not a lot of difference, though I have a hub4 maybe it is quicker but testing speed differences between my mesh routers and also via pfsense setup running on my NAS difference is negligible. You can add 10Gb where you need it with a couple cheapish hubs, The main machine where I have my PC connected to my file server is the quickest hub that I have that is a TL-SX105 Decent hub in that it is multigig so you can take advantage of cheap 2.5/5G now and upgrade to 10Gb on other machines as an when, this unit gives me 20Gb connection to my file server for quick transfer of files (2x10 with SMB3) and a 10G port to go off the rest of my network which is a cludge of 1Gb/2.5Gb stuff tied into this guy Zyxel multigig switch They weren't very expensive ~210 and ~120 respectively and chosen because they are fanless and can be placed in the offices without being a distraction. For SFP only Micro tick do a 5 port (4x10Gb SFP,1x1RJ45) SFP for about £120, which is cheap but obviously transceiver and cabling is more, if you are wired CAT7 you can probably get 10G over existing RJ45 and lower cost over all. On he router side there is stuff like the qnap qhora that looks handy. and not bad value at £220. This seems quite common, my current APs are like this and it is annoying as I max 1Gb transfers over wifi right now and know I could do more, I will be replacing my wifi setup with some gear that has 2.5G also, but it is a minefield as I still want it to be quick on my Wifi 5 machines and not all fancy Wifi 6 APs with 2.5G ports will do 160Mhz channels, so my Wifi 5 stuff would transfer at half the speed of my current cheap APs as nothing I own has the antenna setup for more without that. I will wait to see what comes out on Wifi 6E as a already have compatible hardware for this.
Hi....with respect to switches. I will in general purchase the metal cased $20-$30 8port Gigabit TP-Links that look precisely like the Netgears. The metal TP-Links support IGMP sneaking around which isn't turn on a significant number of the lower estimated Netgear. Anyway the least expensive metal oversaw Netgears can be at a bargain which support many provisions of their more costly models like the new 8 port Nighthawk. In any case, gigabits switches have gotten so modest that even the $10 5 port Tenda's at Monoprice can be easy decisions and exacting expendables. $10 is some of the time multiple times the cost for an Ethernet coupler at a B&M.
