this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Using an enterprise grade networking equipment in the house. My setup uses PFSense (free), which runs in a virtual machine on Proxmox (free) and Ubiquiti WAPs (2 X $100). I have not heard the "Dad the wifi is broken!" call from anyone for a while.
This is a great tip. The only thing you have to watch is enterprise grade networking is usually louder and uses more power. You can replace fans to make it quieter on some equipment, but sometimes it needs the airflow. I just got a brocade icx6450-48p network switch delivered for $85, 48 poe ports and 4 sfp+ ports. You can get some great used enterprise hardware for amazing prices.
undefined> Canopyflyer
Licensing fees can be a bear too. I would avoid true Enterprise gear, such as Cisco, Alpine, etc.
Ubiquiti makes very good enterprise grade gear that is more for the home. I'd call it "Prosumer" rather than enterprise, although I'd have no reservations running a small to medium office on it. My previous home router was a Unifi Security Gateway. Until I upgraded to 300/300Mbs fiber. The USG is only good to about 120Mbs. That's when I put PFSense on a virtual machine on my Proxmox server. Picked up a 4 port server NIC and am running it all on a Dell Precision workstation that has a Xeon processor and ECC memory. I picked the workstation up off of Dell Refurbished, with a 40% off coupon for $300. Both the WAPs in the house are Unify AC Pro's.
Since doing the above, our internet service has been rock solid. My wife was the president of a national non-profit for two years. One year, during the lockdown, she had to run the national yearly meeting for an entire week. Thousands of users all over Zoom. She had to stream video, audio, presentations for 6 hours a day for a week. The only things I did was take one of the WAPs, put it on its own isolated subnet, which only her computer connected to and gave the PFSense VM a bit more memory (which I was thinking of doing anyway). It ran rock solid that entire week. Even with me working from home and the kids having virtual school.