Thinking of Upgrading My Network to Omada but Have Some Questions
Hi,
My apologies if this is posted in the wrong place (and for a lengthy post).
I'm contemplating rebuilding my home network as my current, flat, structure is starting to show some limitations. I could really use some advice.
I have a three floor townhome. On each floor there are ethernet jacks with a single cable run down to the bottom floor, where they connect to an unmanaged switch. From the switch, there is a single connection to my router (Asus RT-89AX) and from there to my ISPs cable modem.
The Asus router has several current WiFi networks running on it and they are meshed using a couple of Asus ZenWiFi CT8 mesh devices. I have set up 2 guest WiFi networks for my wireless IoT devices to keep the overall noise down but this is less than ideal.
The router currently handles DHCP. DNS is serviced by 2 Windows Server 2022 Domain Controllers.
Unmanaged switches on each of the floors connect to the ethernet jacks in order to connect computers and other (wired) devices on each floor (computers, TVs, game consoles, printers and appliances) together. In total there are about 130 devices (wired and wireless) in the network. I do not have any PoE devices currently.
Right now everything works, however, the WiFi devices on the IoT wireless network need to have access to the Intranet, in order to get IP addresses, DNS etc because my router cannot subnet (or so I've been told). All devices are currently in the same network range (the standard 192.168.x.x) so I always have concerns about what they might be able to see in my network.
I'd like to be able to create a new network, in which I can create (port-based) VLANs, so that devices on each floor can be separated into appropriate VLANs based on device type (workstations, Printers, audio/video, IoT, Servers etc.), each with their own subnet and DHCP scope and have the WiFi stuff TRULY segmented from the main network.
It looks like the Omada devices could do this. One of the things that is confusing me right now is the prospect of connecting things (switches) on different floors when trying to use VLANs. From what I've read it looks like I could connect 2 Omada switches together using ethernet, in which case my existing ethernet jacks on each floor could be used and I would just plug the cable from the end of each drop into a port on the downstairs switch? That being the case, my next question would be how to handle the VLANs. Would I need to configure the same VLANS on every switch (and if so, how would I configure DHCP to make sure that the same IP did not get assigned to multiple devices?) and, given that there is only a single cable connecting each switch would any of the ports need to be tagged?
Finally, I was wondering if I could get some equipment recommendations based on my setup? I'd need a 24 port switch for the bottom floor and 16 port switches on each of the other 2 floors. I would also need a WiFi access point on each floor (preferably WiFi 6).
I'm really sorry if these questions seem a little odd. If everything was on the same floor and connecting to the same switch I could figure it out myself but the fact that stuff is spread out across 3 floor has thrown me through a loop.
My sincere thanks in advance for any help you can provide.