What should go into an Ethernet Switch

WilcoFT posted:

SimonPeterArnold posted:

Go wirless less mess, less fuss, now worrying about cables, switches. Mine just works and it's the best thing I did. It's sounds identical to what it did before using cable and switches. Just make sure you buy decent kit.

I couldn’t disagree more.  Wired is always at least as good as wireless and in my experience generally better, certainly from a reliability standpoint.  Also, the OP noted that his new house has stone walls, which isn’t a great environment for wifi. Unlike wireless, wired also isn’t going to be affected because your neighbour added a new router using the same wifi channel as you are using. 

If WLAN is limited to consumer broadband routers you know the chances are it’s going to be pretty dire, if you are going to do WLAN, for goodness sake do it properly... don’t judge it by botched consumer setups. The commercial world has migrated significantly to WlAN, but the setups are a little more involved than a little ‘wifi’ router in the corner of a consumer’s room somewhere beaming at full power competing with a neighbour’s probably  identical setup. It makes you want to laugh or cry... 

WilcoFT posted:

SimonPeterArnold posted:

Go wirless less mess, less fuss, now worrying about cables, switches. Mine just works and it's the best thing I did. It's sounds identical to what it did before using cable and switches. Just make sure you buy decent kit.

I couldn’t disagree more.  Wired is always at least as good as wireless and in my experience generally better, certainly from a reliability standpoint.  Also, the OP noted that his new house has stone walls, which isn’t a great environment for wifi. Unlike wireless, wired also isn’t going to be affected because your neighbour added a new router using the same wifi channel as you are using. 

I use 5ghz for all key streaming, less crowded, travels less to. Not one overlapping signal at all in my street and its a very high concentration of people, infact I barely see another 5GHz and I know they are using it. Also as Simon in Suffolk has said, have overlapping AP network in your house to avoid such issues and don't use crappy consumer kit. You can buy budget enterprise stuff that out performs the top range domestic stuff they push out.

SimonPeterArnold posted:

Go wirless less mess, less fuss, now worrying about cables, switches. Mine just works and it's the best thing I did. It's sounds identical to what it did before using cable and switches. Just make sure you buy decent kit.

I like a man with a sense of humour 

rjstaines posted:

SimonPeterArnold posted:

Go wirless less mess, less fuss, now worrying about cables, switches. Mine just works and it's the best thing I did. It's sounds identical to what it did before using cable and switches. Just make sure you buy decent kit.

I like a man with a sense of humour 

I've had plenty of bad experiences with WiFi, like most people, but still think there's a case for it with the right hardware, and I'm not even sure that it needs to be fancy commercial grade kit to work well. While my Superuniti had truly awful wireless performance, I have an Atom in the exact same location, running on the exact same obsolete, consumer grade Apple network hardware, and it performs reliably. OK, I admit I now run it on a wired connection, simply because there's a switch nearby so it's no trouble to do so, but I have found no advantage in sound quality or reliability in doing this. 

ChrisSU posted:

rjstaines posted:

SimonPeterArnold posted:

Go wirless less mess, less fuss, now worrying about cables, switches. Mine just works and it's the best thing I did. It's sounds identical to what it did before using cable and switches. Just make sure you buy decent kit.

I like a man with a sense of humour 

I've had plenty of bad experiences with WiFi, like most people, but still think there's a case for it with the right hardware, and I'm not even sure that it needs to be fancy commercial grade kit to work well. While my Superuniti had truly awful wireless performance, I have an Atom in the exact same location, running on the exact same obsolete, consumer grade Apple network hardware, and it performs reliably. OK, I admit I now run it on a wired connection, simply because there's a switch nearby so it's no trouble to do so, but I have found no advantage in sound quality or reliability in doing this. 

Perhaps your setup is the excepton that proves the rule, Chris. 

My experience, helping folk setup networks, is that reliability is often a problem.  Annoyingly, wireless solutions that have been running fine can suddenly develop problems, and that's when I tend to get involved.   Being unashamedly biased against wireless solutions with high-end audio kit, my advice is most often "Go wired" 

Chris, true you don’t need to high end WLAN equipment to have an effective as access as wired Ethernet for our high end audio applications, but it can help.

802.11ac really helps as it supports multiple streams.. everso slightly like Ethernet aggregation... the newer Naim streamer support this.

The key thing is to have multiple low powered overlapping access pointsthat participate and hand off to each other to balance frequencies and loading across the ESSID. The access points should be wired into a common layer 2 subnet and that is a good use for edge Ethernet wiring. Low power means less interference and less side effects for the host... I would not be surprised if such a low power access point setup is not dissimilar  to an Ethernet patch lead upgrade etc... you ideally want your WLAN interface card on your streamer using as little power as possible.

I'm thinking along the same lines as Chris about fancy commercial kit   I've stuck with BT provided hubs,  most of which were rubbish but that was in the early days of t'ininterweb.  When I started streaming I had the HH3,  as a data stream switch it was a disaster, meltdown, literally.   From there to HH5 & now to HH6,  not much to say, maybe it's 802.11ac, thing is they just work as  a domestic hub for internet, TV & audio streaming.  

A mate got into streaming before me & TBH his continuous problems held me back.  He used 3rd party routers/modems & was always moaning about drop outs.   I did not get involved other than talking about it so am not close to the detail.  Anyhow, long story short,  he had a stroke & his son rearranged his affairs including the audio to make it simple,  in went a BT HH6 & no more problems.      

Mike, there is nothing wrong with the BT HH6, far from it, it’s a rather advanced and capable bit of kit that shadows some off the shelf broadband routers one can buy... however it’s Wifi is designed for typical  home user use... which is fine I’m sure for 99% of consumers, and in the circumstances does it rather well. However on its own this will not provide a truly capable WLAN capability suitable for Ethernet substitution for high quality streaming etc in a real world environment... but ithe solution is simple, disable its wifi  and let that be handled by separate cooperating WLAN access points running an ESSID. I did exactly that recently with a HH6 ... ok so I don’t use a HH6 for regular use, but if I need its BT loopback diagnostic capability I put it back in circuit.... as far as everything else is concerned  on the home network, if the HH6 is suitably configured, it’s transparent  whether it’s being used or not.

Mornin' Simon,  I avoided to mention ESSID as I've made the positive decision to not go down that route.  I've helped someone install & set up such a system for his & family members/rooms TV's,  but outside that I've no experience.   He seems happy with it & I might well go that way as & when I change something but that probably won't be until I move house.

Hi Mike - yes if and when you do decide to go down that route,  its all generally straightforward - you simply need to use access points that can be managed and configured to work well as an ESSID. You could do it yourself manually with almost any equipment - its just a bit of faff - and one most likely doesn't get the access points features of load balancing and frequency optimisation - so any optimisation will be down to the client alone.

So a couple or three Ubiquiti access points wired together via a switch and providing an ESSID with overlapping zones works well - and I seem to remember Phil Harris @Naim had successfully used these devices for setting up WLAN access for some of the Naim seniors / clients. 

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Chris, true you don’t need to high end WLAN equipment to have an effective as access as wired Ethernet for our high end audio applications, but it can help.

802.11ac really helps as it supports multiple streams.. everso slightly like Ethernet aggregation... the newer Naim streamer support this.

The key thing is to have multiple low powered overlapping access pointsthat participate and hand off to each other to balance frequencies and loading across the ESSID. The access points should be wired into a common layer 2 subnet and that is a good use for edge Ethernet wiring. Low power means less interference and less side effects for the host... I would not be surprised if such a low power access point setup is not dissimilar  to an Ethernet patch lead upgrade etc... you ideally want your WLAN interface card on your streamer using as little power as possible.

Thanks for that, Simon. I was actually considering reverting to using my ISP supplied router, which I have avoided doing for years, but my ISP (Sky) have given me a replacement which has 802.11ac, so in the interests of keeping it simple, I thought I'd try this instead of my Airport Extreme (also ac). I only have one other WAP, an old Airport Express with 802.11n, which, now that I have it running on an Ethernet link, sits in a complete wireless dead spot at the far end of the house. I guess I should probably look at replacing this with an ac device too.

Now that my two streamers are wired, this is more about improving iOS and laptop WiFi performance than any streaming issues - my MacBook is a little sluggish when running off the old Airport Express.