I have watched a lot of the lawrence videos, great work!!! I am wondering what would be the best switch to add to my network at the living room/home theater system? It would be running a smart tv, Apple TV, and a smart speaker. I was looking at the unifi flex mini.
I’m confused about your situation and question. Are you saying you have one of the new Lennar homes, which comes with Ruckus Unleashed switch and APs, and you are looking for a small switch to add?
The Unifi Flex Mini would work fine, but it would be managed by a Unifi controller, which I’m assuming you don’t have right now. Nothing Unifi networking related has a local interface to set it up - you need the controller software which runs on a computer or dedicated appliance. The switch will operate like an unmanaged switch if you don’t set up the software - meaning it will pass traffic through, but only for VLAN 1 (not a VLAN, untagged traffic only) (I’m not sure whether Lennar homes have more than one VLAN by default, or if you have added any).
I know it would be much more expensive, but if you wanted to have the new switch be part of your Unleashed then your only choice is another Ruckus ICX Switch (By the way, if you haven’t seen it yet, Unleashed update 200.8 adds in management of ICX switches, and more functionality will be coming in the future). I believe the best prices for one-off orders are from www.ruckussecurity.com (contact for a quote, the prices they list are higher than they will ever sell one for, but most tech distributors don’t publicize their prices). Other than price, the second unfortunate item is that Ruckus doesn’t make a small (5 port) switch - the smallest is the ICX 7150-C08P.
Yes that is correct the house will come with a ruckus unleashed switch and 2 ap’s. After doing some research I think my best route might be to get the unifi cloud key to manage the 3 unifi flex mini’s I will be adding. Do you think this is my best route?
My recommendation is either buy the Cloud Key Gen 2, or set up the controller on a computer and make sure to export a backup file. The controller doesn’t need to run all the time unless you want to save the client data - which will be almost useless with just three switches out on the edge of the network. As for the Cloud Key Gen 1, it has too many issues for me to consider it worth purchasing.
Thank you for the help!! I am new to the home networking.
I can’t see why you can’t add any switch to your network. However, if you already have ruckus why not add another ? I use Netgear switches, they are work ok, have a crappy UI but don’t cost a fortune.
The above solution seems a lot of effort to add a single additional switch.