I was looking at Ubiquiti networking gear and having a local home networking installer do the work but couldn’t bring myself to spend that much on a home network once everything was added up. I ended up building a home network using mostly used equipment except for some new Wi-Fi 7 access points and PoE cameras. The finished setup is in the photos below. I was able to find some nice Netgear switches used on eBay which includes a total of 12 ports that are 10Gb (Cat 6a cables were used so anything can be 10Gb potentially).
Some info on how the sausage was made. Things I would do differently next time. What worked good. What didn’t work. I hired electricians to run the wires throughout the house and install low voltage boxes. This in my opinion was the hardest part and would’ve taken me a very long time to do by myself. They did it for considerably less than the quotes I received from home networking installers and it took them about half a day to run ~2,000 feet of cable.
It took me about a full day worth of work to terminate things, mount the rack, mount the keystones, label stuff, etc. I used some keystones and a crimper that does it all in one go and trims the wires. They were kind of expensive but totally worth it for the convenience. I was able to terminate things much faster than if I had used older style keystones where each wire has to be pushed down individually.
I should’ve done more research on the rack. It doesn’t have holes that line up with studs so I had to add a plywood board to mount it to. A rack with mounting holes that line up with stud spacing would’ve been a lot easier to setup. I couldn’t find a cable pass-through that I liked so I 3D printed one out of ASA (the white ring that the cables go through).
For the router I used an old office computer I bought refurbished on Amazon for like $150 and then threw in a Intel X540-T2 adapter which can do 10Gb which was also cheap like $35. I wanted it to be able to handle faster than 1Gb WAN connection but also not cost an arm and a leg. I used OPNsense for the router/firewall/VPN software which has been great so far. It’s free and open source. I can get near wire speed VPN access with WireGuard which is nice.
Overall I spent around $3,000 for the equipment, supplies, labor, and tools. I think that’s pretty good value for a home network like this. Originally I was looking at more than that just in equipment from Ubiquiti. Local home networking installers wanted around $4,000 to install the 29 drops I ended up with. I’m definitely happy with the cheap route compared to what would’ve been $8,000 or more going the route I originally looked into. Buying switches on eBay was kind of annoying but it worked out after some hiccups (inaccurate descriptions, damaged in shipping). If you’re considering setting up a home network and have questions feel free to ask. I did a fair amount of research and I’m happy to share what I’ve learned.
The electricians charged $990 to run the cables. It was 29 cables to 12 destinations throughout the home. They cut drywall and installed low voltage boxes and left the unterminated cables laying out of the wall. For PoE cameras they drilled a hole and left the cable hanging through the hole. They said they’d run anything I wanted but they wouldn’t terminate anything or get involved with the details of making it all work. This is why it was less expensive than a network installer is my guess. A network installer would’ve terminated and tested everything (and charged for every minute of it). I had all materials on hand and ready to go (low voltage old work boxes and bulk Cat 6a cable at the point, other materials followed later).
One thing I’d do different is prepare the cables and have them ready to run as soon as the electricians arrive. Probably spent an hour measuring, cutting, and bundling cables that I could’ve done myself the day before to expedite the process and reduce the labor cost.
The “trick” here is buy as many boxes of cabling as your run and then just let them pull from the box. I ran 36 drops in my house this way. I got a free box of Cat5e so I used that as a +1/pull string as needed. I think I ended up buying 4 additional boxes of CAT6 and ran no more than 5 drops per box. That meant never needing to measure and cut for the path I needed to take or whatever, and IMO that was well worth the cost of the extra boxes of cabling. I did also run my own which was cheaper but I’m not sure I’d enjoy climbing around in the attic again a couple days if it needed done.
Good point. This is a reasonable option depending on spool/box size, number of runs, and length of runs. I would’ve needed six spools/boxes in this case. At ~$200 per hour for the labor and roughly $250 in additional material to have more spools/boxes, it’s kind of a wash. Definitely makes sense to have more spools for bigger jobs with more parallel runs.
The electricians ran the cables through the attic without conduit. They’re organized into a few bundles depending on where they’re going so it’s somewhat tidy. This is pretty typical for low voltage stuff like Ethernet. Especially on old construction. Would be nice to have conduit in new construction if I ever go that route.
I wanted to get the network in a place where I wouldn’t have to mess with it for a while. Or all at once like you said. I figure the Cat 6a cable will be viable for a decade or two and I’ll replace other equipment as needed. I think I have more drops than I’ll ever need but we’ll see in time. Hopefully the switches and router last 5+ years.
