In finally decided to remove the daisy chain of small Gigabit switches in my garage and replace them with a single 24-port Gigabit switch. Since I was going to rewire the switches, I decided to also update the location of the switch and install a single UPS. The project was a short afternoon, a one-person job and turned out to be a clean installation. Read on to see how the upgrade turned out.
Hot News: The switch I bought is on sale for one final day $109.99 with Free Shipping!
The Old Problem
You can see in the picture below that my network in the garage is a mess. It started as one cable from the attic and has grown out of control. As my network grew I would just daisy chain more switches together. The garage had two DGS-2205’s and one DGS-2208 connected to four HD HomeRun tuners, one Xbox, a laptop and seven NICs.
D-Link switches are great performing devices, low power and easy to mount.
The New Equipment
In the charts below you can see part numbers and costs but all that really matters is the bottom line. For the entire project (after rebates) I spent $431.53. This was not cheap by any means but the results were well worth the cost. If you were starting from scratch, a couple of eight port switches a UPS and cables would run you a couple of bills anyway so take away the cage and it is not too bad of a deal.
Like the movie reference. Eddie Murphy would be proud. I assume your garage is air conditioned since, if memory serves you’re SoCal? No way I could keep all that stuff in my garage in El Paso between April and October…
Yes, I live outside of Los Angeles near the foothills. It gets to be about 90° at the hottest time inside the garage as I have solar fans and radiant barrier insulation.
It’s a lot toastier than that here in NC in the Summer. I’m looking to do the same thing in a closet under the stair case which is in the middle of the house. Perfect for a star topology setup. I’ve got to add power to the closet first but with a crawl space below, LAN and RG6 coax should be pretty easy to pull. I want to centrally locate phone, LAN, cable, and antenna connections into this closet leaving just one connection back to the service connection. Sounds like this is what you are doing. Why did you pick yelllow?
My home network color coding is:
Blue cables are PC Fast
Black cables are Media Fast
Yellow cables are Gigabit
My exception is that from the “main” switch in the office I have three Gigabit cables that go through the attic. I have red to game room, yellow to the garage and blue to the living room.
Hi Tim,
Nice write up. I was just wondering y you used a D-Link over lets say Linksys and what kind of router/wireless access point your using?
Thanks,
Ray
Brand preference and they look clean. I use a DIR-655 for the router and wireless.
Great write up! I followed it on the BYOB podcast as well. The best part is the Rack enclosure on the wall! Maybe its time for another Friday Night project where you put a 2U server in the enclosure… just a thought 🙂
I read somewhere you picked up a 4th HDhomerun around thanksgiving/x-mas of last year and I figure you have your hands on a PRIME, when are you going to show us some pictures of your latest setup!?!?
I have always enjoyed your write ups because you set up is so close to mine!