Excluding cameras which will communicate with Zoneminder, if I have an Insteon Hub, a home theater receiver, LG webOS TV, Konnected Alarm Panel Pro, and a couple of home automation devices that operate over a wired network, would 100Mbps Ethernet connection suffice or is 1Gbps Ethernet necessary for all the devices to talk to Home Assistant? I’m not talking about devices that do not require a connection to the Internet and to the cloud, but local only, meaning the network won’t have Internet access.
Will home automation devices that only connect to Home Assistant require faster than 100Mbps Ethernet speed in the future?
I’m thinking about getting a Cisco 2960 switch just so I can keep my CCNA skills sharp. I am Cisco CCNA certified as of October 18, 2021, so I do want to put my Cisco skills to good use. 48 ports may seem like a lot, but it’s good to have more than enough Ethernet ports that I might need in the future. That is, if I plan on expanding my future home with more wired home automation devices. And yes, I do have a console cable, so I am covered!
It’ll be fine so long as it just sensor data and not a lot of audio/video. Even AV you may be ok to a point
Many camera,receiver and other cheap device still use low cost 100mb port and I doubt there sitting around flooding that with packets all day.
The TV is the catch. Wifi would be better/maybe easier. Low bandwidth will cause noticeable audio problems. Video is more resilient for some reason.
That said $170 is a lot for that switch
Maybe consider looking for 24 port 1GB. I see these Cisco a lot at university/business auctions @$170 for 5. Maybe look into that if no rush
Above is a guess. Honestly I don’t expect it to be an issue but over time I feel it will become a limitation you work around.
Thanks. I want to avoid WiFi for home automation devices whenever possible. Even a TV is considered a stationary device and a smart TV will not be connected to the Internet but only to Home Assistant. I already have NVIDIA Shield for local streaming, so a TV should not be a problem even when connected to a 100Mbps network. Home Assistant can talk to a smart TV that can control inputs and turn on/off.
Ethernet is definitely great to use, I too prefer it over WiFi for most, if not all of my devices at home.
I believe a lot of smart devices are limited to 100Mbps, as a limitation of their own ethernet port/NIC only being capable of a 10/100 link as opposed to a 10/100/1000 link. I.e, my LG webOS TV which is limited to 100Mbps.
That said, devices like a DVR will perform much better when streaming video over a gigabit line, and if you plan on setting up a NAS for use with your computers then gigabit would be much better for you than a 100Mbps switch.
It may be worth finding a gigabit switch to act as your main switch, and then you can use your Cisco switch as a separate one for your own “lab” use, just so that if you need to factory reset the Cisco switch for any reason as you’ll be potentially trying different configs on it or do a drastic config change, then it won’t affect anyone using your network at the time.
That’s true but that is in general in regards to NAS and NVR. Because I am being very specific, I’m talking about home automation devices such as Insteon Hub and Ethernet-connected devices such as thermostat (if there is one that is not WiFi, that is). Anything that is not audio and video, such as turning on the lights or interacting with any electronic equipment over a network.
Now what about in the future? 5 years? 10 years from now? Will 100Mbps still be the same for home automation devices over the next 5+ years?
You might want to take into consideration the power consumption, fan noise and heat generated by the older devices in comparison to newer ‘green’ devices. Also, the newer POE standards can be useful and a requirement for some newer POE devices, check what versions of POE are supported both by the switches you are buying and the planned POE devices.
The tado internet bridge still uses a 10Mbit-interface which is more than enough for status updates and control commands. 100Mbit will be perfectly fine and it’s unlikely that IoT devices will required gigabit-ethernet. As tmjpugh wrote: As long as it’s not audio/video that’s sent across that link you are fine with 100Mbit/s.
A bit late but this is my experience.
I have not been working with Home Assistant so long. But i have Home Assistant running on a Debian 11 computer with a built in 100/100 mbit/s.
The computer is a HP Slimline 450-a107no with a AMD A6-6310 APU (4core 4Threds), 8GB DDR3 ram and a built in 100 mbit/s LAN.
It does have Mini PCI-E for the WI-FI card. But i removed it cause i dont use it. I was also thought the 100mbit/s could be to little. But i was very wrong. For me it is enough for a long time ahead.
I bought this on Ebay New Mini PCIe to Dual Port Gigabit Network Card RTL8111H 1000Mbps RJ45 Lan Card | eBay but i relized i dont need it. So it will come in good use on another project i have.
My switch is a 24port HP Procurve 1810-24G. It will be enough for me.
