Just a quick question as I'm not sure myself, at home we have our ONT in the garage(back of property) and a 8 port patch panel. We want all ports active to take advantage of wired gigabit speeds etc(no idea why there's no switch installed to start with, right now it's just the ONT plugged into 1 port of the patch panel which is where we have the modem/router in the house).

Can we connect a 8/16 port switch to the ONT(then have our modem/router in another room of the house centrally) or does the modem have to be first?

ONT>Switch>Modem in another room or ONT>Modem>Switch>Install a central AP?

Also if it's the second option then how do we have our landline plugged in at a reasonable location, presumably the patch panel can do both(ie go modem phone1>patchpanelport or something?

Thanks