I think it’s time to re-wire the house. Running everything through 2 floors up to my office isn’t really practical and would exhausting…so I’m thinking 2x10gb down to a 24x PoE in the basement with a local battery backup for it. The white pipe here goes almost to the attic:

There will be a rack up in my office closet later (or maybe sooner than later)...I'm thinking a small 6U conditioned rack down here. All it'll have for now is the 1U switch and a 1-2U battery backup. And maybe a media converter for fiber...all of this is in prep for a fiber swap.

I'm *assuming* AT&T won't let me plug into this switch from the fiber converter on it's own VLAN before going to their gateway and use the 20gb backhaul upstairs where the gateway will live...but if anyone is doing this rather than running a dedicated line I'm super curious.

Alrighty, I've decided to do this in phases, because I don't have a chunk of time off like the original sabbatical plan either.

So, phase 1:
Adding a 9U rack to the basement, which will contain a USW-Pro-24-POE for switching, a 1500VA UPS, and the AT&T gateway to start.

Next will be to connect this upstairs - the USW-Pro-24-POE ( https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-routing-switching/products/usw-pro-24-poe) has 2x 10Gb uplinks - I'll drop 1 more cat6a then bring AT&T in on a 1Gbps port and route upstairs to another 48 port PoE switch over the 20gb LACP backbone - still using the USG for phase 1.

I'm still researching the upstairs - probably a full depth 15U rack so I have plenty of space, and a 1500VA + expansion mount UPS solution. I need to add up all the weight though - need something with beefy wall mounts. With a decent UPS, the hanging capacity can vanish fast.

If this sounds strange: remember my entire network is PoE, from Flex switches in remotes to cameras to APs - so a central UPS at the switch is the strategy to keep internet, wireless, and everything up when power is out. Much cleaner than multiple backups spread out, IMO.

For example, instead of wireless for devices like a Chromecast, I run a PoE switch behind the TV, powered over the Cat6a. It powers a AP across it sometimes (via PoE) as well. This means everything at a TV is wired, not wireless...leaving much more wireless capacity open.

"Hey Nick, that sounds ridiculously over-engineered and overkill for a house"

Yeah, probably. But we all have our vices.

Alrighty! Rack, UPS, 24 port PoE switch, and 10Gb SPF+ modules all arrived today. This weekend shall be some basement fun on phase 1 of the network upgrade in prep for moving from Spectrum gig to AT&T fiber.

Rack LEGO time!

It’s been a very long time since I assembled a rack. Good thing I cleaned the workbench because geez you need a lot of space:

General assembly tip: you can get a stack of magnetic bowls off Amazon or whatever for < $10 usually. They’re fantastic for this sort of thing. If they’re lettered, pin the bag under. They also store easily underneath a shelf with a simple metal plate approach:

Base assembly together:

4 posts in and all assembled. In retrospect, I guess it’s obvious it’s about as heavy as the original box was. Gonna need to recruit help to mount this thing easily.

Oh, rack was completed last night - roll of painter’s tape for scale…and here’s where it needs to be mounted:

Unboxed the switch earlier and got it provisioned and 10Gb transceivers in - just need to find some lumber for mounting the rack properly. Might get to that tonight.

Side supports added and UPS test fit. Lumber is on the way so I plan to mount all this up tonight. Not sure if I’ll get to cabling or not, but hey it’s the weekend!

Fun fact: the rack fans eat about 40 watts. UPS smoke tested…time to figure out dinner then start mounting things.

First up: back mounts (for something beefier than stud hanging) and the French clear style hanger:

Rack hung, UPS and fans are going. Tomorrow I’ll get into mounting the 24x PoE 1Gb + 2x 10Gb switch and network re-routing - relaxing for this evening.

Alrighty - picking this back up. Right now internet runs down to a PoE relay switch behind the basement TV and then from there to basement AP, camera, and living room (all PoE-powered). Time to re-route most of that:

Luckily, I planned ahead here and the distances I ran on original cables were to go to this rack location, with slack in the wall. However, with 4 in that conduit the heads aren’t going to come out cleanly.

Eeek yeah, time to re-crimp, this will be one of the 10Gb pair coming from the office rack/stack upstairs:

Times this door has hit me in the face: 6

Bad door! Timeout.

Well, shit. I had no trouble provisioning it but after plugging up downstairs I’ve got a firmware error. Very bad sign with a new device. Will try to troubleshoot by have to RMA to @ubnt :(

Yeah it's cooked. Dammit.

I ordered patch panel (keystone style) and panel cables (now that I know how I want this to be setup)...but that'll have to wait. I'll work on re-patching through the USW-Flex in the rack for now.

For now, getting the basement and living room back online while I deal with RMA mess.

As a final insult from the DOA switch, I evidently cross-threaded the lower right screw. It was so jammed I broke the screw in half with an impact driver before it came free. So…time to order more rack nuts and such as well.

Unfortunately with shipping delays my switch RMA hasn’t even arrived yet (shipped with 2-day…over a week ago), so who knows when I’ll get it back. I may stop dealing with @ubnt on that front and switch to MikroTik for these switches (e.g. CRS354-48P-4S+2Q+RM).

For now, patch for downstairs assembled - using cat6 keystones (can’t really find 6a) and cat7 for the 2x 10Gb drops to this location. Makes it easy to tell what’s where:

Actually dealing with a DOA/RMA device is enough to turn me off from directly buying from @ubnt's store again. From Amazon, I could just return it. I ordered direct for warranty...but dealing with their service just doesn't seem worth it. Oh well, lesson learned the hard way.

RMA replacement has finally arrived - 11 day turnaround time. Let’s try this again…

We’re also going to give Rack Studs a go this round. They snap in pretty easy, and the yellow plate fills the gap keeping the spring out. Rated for 44lbs…let’s see how this goes.

Had a few people ask me about crimping previously. FWIW, I swear by pass-through connectors which are so much easier to deal with. Here’s how they work: wires through the end and crimper has a guillotine. Simpler and a lot less frustrating:

Alrighty - ignore that camera cable that’s about a foot too short in the back (dammit!). Mounted…let’s fire it up and…go open all those patch cables I forgot to bring downstairs:

And we’re live! 10Gb SFP+ transceivers up and running fine:

Someone asked what it looks like on an end - here ya go:

Cables! White is primary/ trunk network, orange is 10Gb, blue is any guest, red will be for external VLAN (fiber will terminate in this switch when it’s installed). I know I’ll need >6in later - just got enough for now and then I’ll see what distances I need much more easily:

God. Fucking. Dammit. They shipped me back a non-PoE switch from the RMA. I just now realized it when wondering why my cabling wasn’t working and looking for power controls in the controller. The cables are fine, the devices just aren’t powered. Incredibly frustrated with @ubnt.

It looks like the RMA lookup by MAC identified my old switch as a non-PoE for some reason. Still not sure what's going on yet, but the @ubnt folks are helping me track down what's wrong (so we can improve this process, for everyone).

I do appreciate them working to debug here.

I am quite (I think understandably) frustrated at a series of events, which happens. Support folks who help debug issues despite that: you are saints. I have to walk away from the computer sometimes to write a level-headed response to things, where y'all deal with this all day.

Props to @spencersoo for helping me figure this out on the backend and try to fix whatever process gaps led to paying DOA shipping (I've been told that's *not* normal, which is good), and getting an incorrect replacement. I hope some of our time spent here saves time for many.

Alrighty, replacement USW-Pro-24-PoE has arrived - let’s give this a go!

Interestingly it’s on a 4.x firmware, whereas the original was on a 5.x line. Different shipments and such I guess, just curious. Alrighty firmware upgrade and adoption time - let’s get this thing installed:

Alrighty - all provisioned (I’ll static IP and such later - different priorities since laptop also ate it yesterday)

Rack mounts on, racked, and up and running. Hoorah - basement phase 1 is done. Fiber will connect here later - time to plan out the upstairs rack that’ll do 2x10Gb down to this 24 port next. Thanks @spencersoo for helping me get sorted through the glitches <3

For anyone curious or planning: this switch is eating about 34 watts (including the 13.5 watts of PoE load), which means almost 4 hours of battery backup with a 1500VA unit. Not to shabby.

Before and after for this leg of the install. For now, back to coding then planning the upstairs office install later tonight.

Alrighty, if we’re going to put a rack in my upstairs office closet…need to clean it up first. Lots of papers to file and maybe shelves to re-arrange to see what kind of depth works. I’m currently thinking shallower by the door…but maybe deeper at the back with some shuffling:

I know it doesn’t look like much, but had to pay down some tech debt and file or shred 4 years of mail build-up.

But that’s now out of the way and I have a plan! Beside the far tall shelf with the roller coaster, there’s enough room for the 2x2 unit, pivoted to be parallel:

With the 4x2 units where the coaster is and the millennium falcon one moved by the light switch (look I don’t know how else to label them, so we’re going with the LEGO naming convention here), there should be room for a nice, tall, deep rack in the corner there, facing the door:

More cables have arrived! I’ve got to get some organization storage going for this. Recommendations? Needs to be fairly compact, in an IKEA-size cue to fit their shelves would be spectacular.

Seeing as internet is down anyway.…might as well look at replacing the USG with a 10Gb upgrade.

Alright…let’s get to work. Also mounting the CloudKey downstairs for now.

Here’s how that kit works:

Alrighty, let’s fire it up and....Nick, dammit, you gotta put the drive back in.

Alrighty controller back up, and UXG-Pro mounted - time to go play with configuration…and maybe re-route some coax down here to move the cable modem before fiber arrives.

Coax entry: success! Now to move cable modem and such down here…and hope I did it right. Since the line is snapped up the street there’s no way to know if I fucked it up :)

Coax routed to cabinet, can’t even tell it was added. Now to terminate some coax and move the modem!

Outside cable hooked up (it has a 7db reducer for the curious):

Tip: if you do any coax work, carry one of these notched 7/16 wrenches, they make life so much easier:

Alrighty, cable modem moved - that went a lot faster than I thought it would. Now when gig symmetrical fiber arrives Thursday, we’re not troubleshooting a gateway and ISP change all at once...just an ISP change.

Got controller sorted (very easy transition), just waiting for Spectrum to fix the lines down the road and restore external connectivity.

Or, my coax job was bad and I'd never know they fixed those lines...could go either way in 2020.

Alrighty, fiber is installed - now figuring out why my SFP+ transceiver isn't lighting up to jack it into the network.

Alrighty, jacked into the UXG-Pro and working...for some reason the 10Gb SFP+ BASE-T transceiver will not light to the AT&T gateway (haven't removed it from the mix yet)...but lights fine against Spectrum.

I'm not sure if I'm keeping dual ISPs for redundancy or not yet.

I didn’t grab a ton of pics since I was chatting up the installer more of the time (thanks for fielding lots of questions Travis!), but it’s in now - fiber and coax both in the downstairs rack. Maybe I’ll lower Spectrum to 100/20 and keep it as a backup ISP.

I'm not sure if I'll remove their gateway or not (you *can* make the Ubiquiti gear, and others, talk directly to the ONT), but in case I want to: I got a split ONT/gateway setup. Their new default is 1 combo unit the fiber goes directly into (WiFi 6, etc.), but it's also taller.

8x10Gb backplane for the basement has arrived - will install this after work not interrupting school internet and such.

Let’s do this.

Racked up - working on the aggregate bonds now.

Alrighty, all configured (I kept doing it backwards after moving the controller...that's on me). 20Gb to the 24x PoE, currently 2Gb to upstairs (ready to go 20Gb), and UXG-Pro routing 10Gb through to this spine. Overall: looking good.

Also wasn’t happy with front panel on the CloudKey - so routed back through the rear port and patch panel:

Alrighty, let's start upstairs. First up is rack, patch panel, keystone bits, and a USW-Pro-24-POE. I'm not sure if I'm going with a 8x 10Gb spine switch upstairs or the slightly larger 28x 10Gb + 4x 25Gb option (depends on availability). Still, step 1 is 2x 10Gb to basement.

Overall: I'm converting my existing layout of some network gear, UPSes, and drives in 2 IKEA units with desktop systems on top to...a rack! That'll give me more office space overall. Here's a recent-ish pic of the current layout. Picture the right as a 15U rack instead:

I'll have overall less gear in the end - that second black tower will be a 2U-3U server chassis. Main desktop (new build, more to come) will be a 3U chassis most likely. 2U for switches, 1 for patch, and 2-4U for UPS down bottom (likely 1500VA + expansion battery...we'll see!)

The drives and Synology in the upper left, time capsule in the upper right, etc. will all be collapsed into that second tower replacement. Maybe a custom build with TrueNAS, maybe Synology, not sure yet. Likely a ~6-8x 12TB option for photo backup, Plex, etc. Suggestions welcome!

People keep telling me a rack in the office is too noisy, but I don't buy that!

First: racks are silent, they make no noise. Things *in* them make noise, and we're going to be paying attention to that. Lower wattage everywhere possible means less to cool and longer UPS runtime.

The rack will have soundproofing and cooling - and this will likely be my first water cooling build for the 3U server chassis for my main machine. The file/Plex/etc. server I'd like to have a GPU in for transcode offline and a lower TDP processor, basically: quiet less playing.

Maybe an afternoon project…