Vlan Help

[Minimos]

Hi,

I am hoping some of you knowledgeable people can help me confirm a thought train I have regarding a vlan setup at home.

Let me outline the problem I am trying to solve:-

I have Fibre Broadband supplied by Plusnet on the BT Network. I get good sync speeds in the high 70's with few errors on the line. My Master Socket is at the front of the house in the hallway where the OpenReach Modem is situated. I have an office on the first floor where my Netgear R7500 lives, with 1 Cat5e cable run under and along the carpet edge up the stairs into the office.

I have an Xbox and Playstation TV downstairs in different lounges which I want to be wired. Currently these are using AV600 Home Plugs, however when they are communicating across the same electrical circuit they get roughly 69Mbps which is less than my BB speed but still ok, however as I have the R7500 upstairs this is on a different circuit in the fusebox so sync speeds are lower at 40Mbps and I get some packet loss now and again if other devices are on). I also have multiple wired devices in the office.

Here are my current restraints:-

• My wife does not want the R7500 in the hallway as in her words it is ugly and she wants the least amount of clutter in the hallway,
• Running an additional Cat5e from the hallway to upstairs may be difficult due to limited space between the grip rods and wall. I have already used flat Cat 5e.

Here is what I hope to achieve:-

1. Get full line rate for all my wired devices
2. Install as little new cabling (especially on long runs) as possible
3. Utilise my existing Cat5e from hallway to office as a backbone
4. Future proof to a certain degree for any uplift ion FTTC speed when BT enable vectoring.

So here is my theory on how this could work:-

I could utilise 2 managed switches that support VLAN to tag traffic from the OR modem and Local LAN provided by the DHCP services of the R7500 to use the same cable which currently carries my Fibre WAN traffic (hallway to office).

I have 1 managed switch in a TP Link SG-2008 which supports Vlan tagging already and it is a question of whether I invest in a 2nd box to achieve my desired set up.

I planned on using Port 1 on the 1st Switch to connect to the OR modem, so that data coming from this plan can be tagged as VLAN 10.

Port 2 would be used to carry the link and would connect into Port 2 of the 2nd switch upstairs.

Port 1 of the 2nd Switch would be used to connect to the WAN port on the R7500.

All other ports on both switches would be used for local LAN as VLAN 20.

Thanks for staying with me so far, so here are my questions:-

1. Can you untag specific VLAN traffic to a specific port? i.e. I know that it can be tagged easily enough from the modem but as the 2nd switch needs to decode the VLAN data on port 2 how does it know to only send VLAN 10 traffic to port 1 on the 2nd switch?
2. It's a similar question in reverse, if I plug a LAN cable from the Port 1 on the R7500 to Port 3 on the 2nd Switch how can the first switch know that all traffic tagged as VLAN 20 should only go to Port 3 and above on the first switch?
3. I will also need some more switches in the 2 lounges so that I can connect TV's and Sky box (may as well if the wire has been run to these locations). Can I use a simple dumb switch connected to the managed switch or will they be problems due to VLAN'S being used (I believe by the time it gets as far as a dumb switch the 2 managed items will have already segregated traffic so it should not be a problem?)
4. Traffic on the BT network use VLAN101, but as the modem will have already handled the message to the WAN, will this introduce any problems with additional VLAN tags?

Unfortunately I am one component away from testing this setup myself, and I don't want to sink money into a 2nd switch if it is not possible to achieve my theory.

Thanks in advance for any guidance

Minimos

[abaxas]

Dont quote me on this..........

But if you were to use ethernet splitters you should be able to send 2x 100mbit connections down the same cable as they 100mbps only uses 2 of the 4 pairs. Gigabit uses all 4.

Not a good solution but should work providing all 4 pairs are connected on your cable.

[Minimos]

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

I was hoping to keep full speed out of the existing cable just in case there are any further bumps in Vdsl from BT in the future.

[shaithis]

1. Set the port to be VLAN 10 Untagged
2. I need a diagram to understand!
3. As long as you plug it into an untagged port, you can then hang dumb switches off of it.
4. As far as I know, the BTO modem will only output untagged packets

Basically you only really need to use tagging if you want to run multiple VLANs through a single port (trunking). Otherwise , if a port is untagged all traffic entering the port will get assumed as being that VLAN (and tagged before sending on) and all traffic leaving it will be untagged.

[Minimos]

Excellent thanks Shaithis.

You have confirmed what I needed to know. 2nd Switch has been ordered.

I will make a post back once I have it up and running to mark the thread as resolved and give a full and clear explanation to anyone else with similar questions