Network configuration questions

Networking & Firewalls
1

I have a jumbled mess that I would like to tackle and make work better if I can. I’m looking for thoughts and suggestions on how to use what existing equipment I have to make something that works better.

Everything is just plugged in to 2 switches which are plugged into each other and then into a router. No vlans, no separation or anything and all ip’s are on 192.168.1.x with no separation of anything. This worked okay when there was just a couple computers and a NAS system. Now with everything it seems somewhat slow and congested all the time, especially after adding the security cameras. Maybe it’s slow from all the broadcast info going on competing with real data? Anyway here is an overview of what I have.

Isp modem → Router → switch1 → switch2poe
^ ^
Wireless1, 2; Security Cam1,2;
5 computers; racknas1, 2, 3, 4;
desknas 1,2;

Router is an EdgeRouter Pro 8 (8 port) capable of vlans and routing between the ports
Switch1 is an EgdeSwitch 24 Pro (poe) switch capable of vlans and routing
Switch2 is a Netgear [NETGEAR GS724TPv2 (poe) capable of vlans and routing
Wireless1 is Mikrotik Qube ap out to another building connected to a Mikrotik switch out there with a TV and 2 computers.
Wireless2 is a Netgear Nighthawk for house wireless as an ap for our cell phones and tablets.

NAS systems are QNAP and Truenas Scale

Would it be good to setup the router ports/vlans to route to vlans set on the switch?

I can put 2 (or more) vlans on each port so I was thinking along the lines of:

Port 1 of the router remains serving the 192.168.1.x ip range Computers laptops
Port 2a vlan2 serves part of switch1 10.10.10.1 - main 2 nas systems
Port 2b vlan3 serves second part of switch1 10.10.20.1 2 desk nas systems
Port 3a vlan4 serves first part of switch2 10.10.30.1 security cams and nas
Port 3b vlan5 serves second part of switch2 10.10.40.1 home lab misc.

I was thinking this may get some of the excess broadcast traffic that is being broadcast everywhere and limit it and the data to just the vlan it needs to be associated with.

I’m not looking to stream video to tv’s or anything especially since it is a 1GB network. The only requirements I have is everything needs to be able to talk to each other and be accessible from anywhere on site and also have access to the web for their software updates, sending data to S3 for backup, etc. when needed.

Thoughts?

2

Unless you have over 200 devices, I doubt broadcast traffic is the issue. When you say slow, are you referring to the wireless speed or are you doing some type of speed test between the wired devices?

3

I did not do any official speed tests wired or wireless between computers. So it is mostly subjective but if you use something all day every day, you tend to notice when something is not quite right. The system was just thrown together over the years with no real thought about anything. There are about 28 devices total connected but not all are active.

I don’t see any real issues with times when doing a ping (ping 192.168.1.xxx -l 40096 -n 20) with a 40096 packet size or the normal 32 bits packet size to local computers and averages about 1ms wired and wireless about 9ms to the outbuilding through a switch and over the wireless link A ping from my computer to 1.1.1.1 is ~ 290ms first uncached ping then 40ms after with 40096 bytes by name or by ip so there is a delay there initially but then it’s cached and times go down to an average of 53Ms.

Wife does Photoshop editing and files are stored/saved on the server and edited locally then uploaded to a website for publishing/client review. I get complaints from her that her workflow is much slower in response than it used to be.

the display app on a laptop used to monitor the cameras, frames dropping and random disconnects on a frequent basis. “unable to connect to server - Auto Reconnect in 60 seconds”. This issue will go and come depending on if wife is moving a large amount of files to/from the storage server or uploading files to her website site creating a lot of activity.

I was thinking that maybe the 2 cameras were somehow flooding the network slowing things down especially since there is a lot of other file traffic during the day.