It was recently announced that FTTH will soon (finally) be available in my market. The provider coming to town offers rates up to 8g.
I’m upgrading from DSL at <100mbps - really exciting! However I will then face a bit of an issue.
I self host many services over my DSL, and use custom firmware on my router. My DSL modem is in a transparent bridging mode. I like the flexibility and customizability this setup provides.
The new service includes a WiFi 7 router, but that means I’ll also potentially be subject to all the weird things providers like to do, like adding backdoors, opening shared WiFi networks, force deploying different firmware, etc. Plus I won’t be running any kind of service on the router itself, which I do have today (transparent proxy etc). The router I have today is not going to enable me to touch the peak bandwidth available.
What’re the best options to upgrade LAN components so that I can support multi gig internal networking speeds, ensure my self hosted services all function normally, and I take advantage of the bandwidth the ISP upgrade offers? In your personal opinion, is it worth it to invest in upgraded lan components?
Anyone have experience converting from 1G LAN to 2.5 or even 10?
Do I really need 8G FTTH, of course not, but if I ever wanted to get the max out of it, what does that take?
Dang. Not the company I was hoping.
If they’re using an eero router, I’m going to assume you’ll just have an ethernet cable from an ONT then into the router. Ask the installer if you need to use the eero or can you install your own router. That may alleviate some of your concerns.
I work for an ISP and self host. I have more things in place to track my usage than any ISP would put just because I make myself the guinea pig for new equipment and want to know exactly what is happening. You will never use a full 8 gig (at least as of now, obviously in the future that will change). If the extra money isn’t an issue do it, but if you can “girl math” the $30 price difference, stick with that for a year and spend the extra $360 you saved on multi-gig networking equipment, that’s what I’d do.
I’m actually planning to do just about that, based on the discussion in this thread.
I found that I can get an unmanaged switch with 4 2.5gbe ports for under $60, I can use my existing cabling at that speed. I’ll upgrade my aging router to an x86 (n100 or similar) and load my favorite router distro on it. Use that as the router, connect Wi-Fi APs (might even use the eero they give me that way).
I’ll upgrade my systems on the Ethernet using USB dongles (several options at around $20 each)
I’m feeling that improving much beyond 2.5 internally is a bit of a waste at this point.
Thanks to all posters in this thread!