In reply to a post by Tacitus:

<snip> round the side wall and into a spare bedroom where the router is. It's there because it's about the best place to give decent WiFi across the bungalow.

My router is a non wifi unit, and as the property is also a bungalow, I chose to use PoE ceiling mounted wifi access points. So the position of the router is sort of irrelevant in my case. It might be something to think about if you are already in the roof space with cables?

In reply to a post by Adduxi:

In reply to a post by Tacitus:

<snip> round the side wall and into a spare bedroom where the router is. It's there because it's about the best place to give decent WiFi across the bungalow.

My router is a non wifi unit, and as the property is also a bungalow, I chose to use PoE ceiling mounted wifi access points. So the position of the router is sort of irrelevant in my case. It might be something to think about if you are already in the roof space with cables?

It had crossed my mind to do that and in fact it wouldn't be that difficult. Some of the ceiling mounted units are quite neat and the WiFi access points tend to be better all round than the all-in-one-units. I would still need to have the main router in the bedroom since that's where the Cat5 wiring converges.

In reply to a post by Tacitus:

I would still need to have the main router in the bedroom since that's where the Cat5 wiring converges.

If you do go with the WiFi access points you would then have the flexibility to put a switch where the connections converge and the router at the other end of one of the converging connections?

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

In reply to a post by Tacitus:

I would still need to have the main router in the bedroom since that's where the Cat5 wiring converges.

If you do go with the WiFi access points you would then have the flexibility to put a switch where the connections converge and the router at the other end of one of the converging connections?

That's another possibility. Plenty of cheap Gigabit switches around and I don't doubt reasonably priced 2.5/10Gig ones will soon be available. To be fair though, I've not looked that hard to find any.

In reply to a post by Tacitus:

That's another possibility. Plenty of cheap Gigabit switches around and I don't doubt reasonably priced 2.5/10Gig ones will soon be available. To be fair though, I've not looked that hard to find any.

2.5 GigE with 5 ports are reasonably priced, but more ports are expensive, and 10GigE is still expensive (for home use).

10Gbe is still a pain to do on mainstream mobos, theres only one 1x pcie 4.0 10gbe nic out there.

2.5gb is becoming common place on mobos, and unmanaged 2.5gb switches are as you said are now reasonable in price..

In reply to a post by Taras:

10Gbe is still a pain to do on mainstream mobos, theres only one 1x pcie 4.0 10gbe nic out there. .5gb is becoming common place on mobos, and unmanaged 2.5gb switches are as you said are now reasonable in price..

None of my desktops have Thunderbolt, but laptops are appearing with Thunderbolt 4 that can connected to 10GigE but its not cheap.

In reply to a post by Taras:

10Gbe is still a pain to do on mainstream mobos, theres only one 1x pcie 4.0 10gbe nic out there.

The new Mac Mini offers 10GbE as an addtional option for £100 extra. Not looked, but I would guess others in the current Mac range also do so, or will at the next revision.

My 3 years old Intel version has 2.5GbE but everything else on the network is still only 1GbE. Perhaps in three years or so when I replace the current one with an Apple Silicon Mini, it may be worth going for the 10GbE option, but as others have said for home use there doesn't appear to be much in the way of switches and NAS that currently offers it.

In reply to a post by Tacitus:

much in the way of switches and NAS that currently offers it.

Synology offer an add-on card for some of the modern range that is 10 & 2.5 compatible. My corporate and personal laptops that support WiFi 6/6E with 160MHz wide, one has a 1GigE port, the other no Ethernet - so the rest of the consumer and pro-sumer space is not keeping up with the Mac Mini offering

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Synology offer an add-on card for some of the modern range that is 10 & 2.5 compatible.

That's worth knowing next time I need a new modem.