For a more detailed background of the home network’s current state, see Home Network – 2025 Edition which goes into much more details about the equipment currently installed. This update will only cover a couple minor changes made since then.
It has been less than a year and a half since the last major update to the home network, so it is a little strange to have another update so soon. This is especially weird since the last update added multiple 2.5G and 10G capabilities, which were and still are much more bandwidth than I need. So, why have I now added eight more 10G ports and increased the bandwidth to both my switches from 10G to 20G? The answer is not based on any new need, but one based on a series of illogical choices.
I have been using a Ubiquity Security Gateway (USG) for about 10 years as the primary connection and router between the Internet and my home network. I have also been using a Ubiquity Cloud Key for about five years to configure the network and as a storage device for my security cameras. I have had no issues with those devices, and had no plans to upgrade them anytime soon. In fact, the plan was to keep them until the day when I might be able to get a fiber Internet connection into my house, (which, frankly, does not seem likely unless I move). However, those plans changed when one day I received a notice that support for the USG was ending.
I expect that I could have just kept things as they were and nothing would have broken, but I had been thinking about replacing the USG and cloud key with a Ubiquity Dream Machine Pro (UDM) for a while; I just did not have a good reason to do so. While end-of-support of the USG may not have been a good reason, it was enough to push me over the edge and add a UDM to my shopping cart.
This seems like an easy change—swap two devices with one and call it a day. But the UDM has a 10G port on it. My Internet connection maxes out at 1G, so plugging the UDM into a 1G port on my switch would have been fine and not left any bandwidth on the floor. If at some point in the future I was able to get more than a 1G connection to the house, then I could make the necessary upgrades to support that. Except the illogical part of my brain kept pushing me to “max things out” and use the 10G port to connect the UDM to the rest of the network.
OK, so add a 10G direct attach cable to the order and call it a day! Except, all of the 10G ports on my network were now occupied after the 2025 upgrades. A logical person would probably pump the brakes at this point, forget about going 10G on the UDM, and possibly stop thinking about any upgrades at all. But my brain kept pushing to “max things out!”
That is how I ended up adding an 8 port 10G aggregation switch to my cart. This would allow me to plug my two servers, two switches, and UDM into the new switch leaving three 10G ports available for future expansion. Keep in mind that I have absolutely no need for anything close to 10G speeds on my network; it was just cool and prices on 10G equipment, while not cheap, have become somewhat affordable over the years.
This should have been the end of things, (well, it really should have ended before it started), but now I had a 10G port free on each existing switch and three 10G ports free on the new aggregation switch. If I added just two more 10G direct attach cables to my order, I could use network bonding to create 20G pipes between the aggregator and each switch. And of course, my brain was on a roll now shouting, “MAX IT OUT!”.
At this point, all logic had gone out the window, (not that it was there to start with), and I decided to upgrade one of my WiFi access points (AP) from WiFi5 to WiFi7. I had done that with the primary AP in my house during the 2025 upgrade. But I have two others and figured I might as well upgrade one more. Luckily, the APs are all already plugged into 2.5G ports on my switch, (the new ones support that), so no more upgrades were needed there.
It is a little amazing that I stopped there and did not upgrade my last AP. I think looking at the cost of everything in my shopping cart caused reality to finally kick in—except not enough to completely stop me from placing the order. I expect at some point, when my brain starts nudging me to “max it out” once again, I will upgrade the last AP. But today is not that day.