Redesigning my Network
A hallmark of a homelab is complexity, so why not make the home network unnecessarily complex as well?! I half-joke, but considering I am planning to rollout a intercontinental VPN network to connect friends and family homes together, this should not come as a surprise.
Anways, it has to start somewhere so lets begin with my home network. Currently I am using a UniFi Express 7 which was fine for a few months but now that I am running production-level servers at home, it is starting to become sluggish. It also does not have enough ethernet ports on it.
Ubiquiti make door bells which support Power over Ethernet, and when I add up all of the devices in my home that can use Ethernet I am well into double figures. This means that merely upgrading from Express 7 to Dream Router 7 won’t cut the mustard either, I need to think bigger.
Enter: UniFi Dream Machine Pro SE (the SE stands for Special Edition). The main selling point is that they have eight wonderful PoE ports on them as well as two SFP ports. It doesn’t do WiFi but I can relegate my current Express 7 to just being an AP and that is my network complete.
(INTERNET)
|
|
+-------------------------------+
| Virgin Media Hub / Modem |
| (ideally in Modem Mode) |
+---------------+---------------+
|
| Ethernet (WAN)
v
============================== UPSTAIRS =======================================
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| UniFi Dream Machine Pro SE (UDM-SE) |
| "Network Core" (Router/Firewall) |
| |
| WAN <---------------- from Virgin modem |
| LAN Switch Ports (incl. PoE) |
+----+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+------------+
| | | | |
| | | | |
[Server 1] [Server 2] [Server 3] [Server 4] |
|
| Uplink down
| (Data + PoE*)
v
========================== BETWEEN FLOORS =====================================
+---------------------------+
| USW-Flex (46W budget) |
| (acts as downstairs fanout)|
+----+-----------+-----------+
| |
| |
============================= DOWNSTAIRS ======================================
+-------------------+ +-----------------------+
| Xbox One | | NVIDIA Shield Pro |
+-------------------+ +-----------------------+
|
| (future)
v
+------------------------+
| UniFi Doorbell Lite |
| (often Wi-Fi; |
| PoE requires adapter)|
+------------------------+
(Optional but common for doorbell / phones)
|
v
+------------------------+
| UniFi AP (
|
+------------------------+