Upgrading & future-proving my home network

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Greetings everyone,

I just made an account and this is my first post. A bit of background. I live in a two-story apartment, about 13 years old. Fiber lines have been laid, but have not yet been installed inside the apartments. No news on when this will happen because it has to go through the owner of the rental apartments. As I own my apartment, I'm talking with the provider if it is possible to have mine installed. Currently, I have 500 Mbit down/50Mbit up.

The current setup:

  • Provider supplied Compal CH7465LG-ZG modem/router in bridged mode;
  • WRT1900ACS-EU with the OEM software.

The WRT1900ACS was bought new, back in 2012 or so with the idea of upgrading to OpenWRT but I never had the time.

The WRT is connected to:

  • A Netgear Prosafe Plus GS105E switch;
  • Fibaro Home Center 3;
  • Philips Hue Bridge;
  • A Synology NAS;
  • Two RJ45 in-wall connectors, one in the downstairs living room, the second in the upstairs home office.

The downstairs RJ45 connects to two Zyxel 8-port switches, for hardwiring all devices which have a hard connection, ie. the TV, aVR, Blu Ray player, Wiim Pro, Apple TV, RPI etc. Connected via Wifi, MacBooks, Ipad, mobile phone, etc.

Lately, transferring online files from a seedbox with FileZilla on my MacBook Pro to the NAS, the connection keeps on dropping. I've set the MacBook to use the 5Ghz network and use a VPN. The last two days, it kept dropping with each transfer, even restarting the router didn't help. What should've been a 1-hour transfer turned into a two-day slog. I have noticed a pattern, that the Wifi will work flawlessly for a few weeks, then suddenly, will not connect to the internet. This has been an occurrence for a long time now. Even when I shut down the VPN, which is not something I want to do.

Since it's been a decade since I last actively delved into networking and such, I'm looking at how to update my current setup. Looking at the problems that the WRT1900ACS seems to have, I want to replace it, again, with the idea to update the software to OpenWRT.

Assuming that fiber won't be installed in the apartments just yet and taking into account the "So you have 500Mbps.." pinned comment, I'm looking for advice on how to upgrade the network, what hardware to look at. Especially since I've been upgrading to a 'Smart Home', hence the Home Center 3.

At the moment, I don't have Wifi Access Points because, while the WRT1900 is situated in the utility closet upstairs, it delivers high throughput all over the apartment. I'm assuming that in the new setup, that will change. Also, as I'm in Europe (Netherlands), some items may not be available locally.

Any insights would be appreciated.

2

This device is supported by OpenWrt, but its wireless side is… picky… Both with the OEM firmware and mwlwifi on OpenWrt, so there's no reason to try and defer the question a few weeks/ months.

This is still fully valid, but the filogic 820/ 830/ 880 based devices are contending the question.

It's difficult to provide advice, as it's unclear what you want to achieve, respectively how far you want to go (in terms of router, switch(es) and AP(s)) - nor what kind of wan/ lan speeds you have in mind (there's quite a difference between 1 GBit/s or maybe 2.5 GBit/s - or anything beyond that).

In general, while planning ahead is always a good idea, planning too far ahead without a tangible idea what this future might look like, just drives up the costs, without really providing a benefit. Don't plan ahead for more than 18-24 months - if in doubt, go with something cheaper that will cover this time span and defer the real change when you are faced with it.

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