Home network upgrade is Grandstream a good option?

Forums › LAN (ethernet/Wifi/routers/Bluetooth) › Home network upgrade is Grandstream a good option?

KevlarCoated

23 posts

Geek

#319110 23-Mar-2025 13:33

It's come time for me to upgrade my home network. Ive had a few issues with lag in video calls when some home appliances are running consistently causing issues. As Im working from home a lot Im tired of it so it's time to upgrade. Ubiquiti has a bit of a bad rep for trying to keep people in their walled garden and their 10Gb stuff doesnt seem to be reasonably priced

Currently I have a single Ubiquiti dream machine (the original stand alone version.) Now I realise that it would be more economical for me to just add an AP and be done with it I want to upgrade my wired network to 10Gb and add wired security cameras.

Im thinking of keeping the UDM for now and just using it as a route (I will probably switch to pfSense/OpenSense or mikrotik in the future when I upgrade my internet)

Network switch GWN7822P
APs 2x GWN7665

Devices will be
2x servers on 10Gb
1x desktop on 10Gb
a few TVs, laptops (sometimes) on wired ethernet
4-6 POE cameras
Usual wifi stuff, phones, Shelly/ESP devices

So my question is is grandstream stuff a good fit? Are there better cost comparable options or options that are much better for a small increase?
I considered Aruba instanton but their stuff seems to be a lot more expensive. I considered second hand Ruckus but it seems to be hard to find here at a reasonable price.

Thanks

lxsw20

3555 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#3356520 23-Mar-2025 13:56

Are you going to 10Gbit because you think that will fix your video call issues, or because you're just playing around with a home lab type situation?

I had a Grandstream 1Gbit stack before going back to Unifi, overall it was absolutely fine

KevlarCoated

23 posts

Geek

#3356522 23-Mar-2025 14:05

lxsw20:

Are you going to 10Gbit because you think that will fix your video call issues, or because you're just playing around with a home lab type situation?

Totally unrelated to my video call issues. More of a "I have a problem to fix (video calls) I might as well do the upgrade to 10Gb for my servers".

Also with the APs being 2.5GbE it felt a bit silly to restrict myself to 1Gb

fe31nz

1233 posts

Uber Geek

#3356761 23-Mar-2025 22:56

It can be a bit of a problem getting 10 Gbit/s Ethernet adapters that will fit on modern motherboards. It used to be that motherboards had a PCIe x8 slot spare to put one in, but that is not so common now, and you are lucky if you even have a spare slot that will do x1. So check first before you decide on what adapters to buy. Recently I had that problem with my Asus Tuf Gaming B650-E WiFi motherboard - it has only three PCIe slots, one v4.0 x16, one v4.0 x1 (physically x16) and one v4.0 x1 (physically x1). So if I am using the x16 for my graphics card, then I only have x1 slots for anything else, including a 10 Gbit/s Ethernet card. And until late last year, there were no 10 Gbit/s Ethernet cards that worked in a x1 slot - they best was PCIe v3 in a x2 slot. Fortunately, Acquantia released a new 10 Gbit/s Ethernet chip with auto configuring PCIe interface, which can do v4 x1, or v3 x2 or v2 x4 and other combinations. Lots of manufacturers seem to have started using the chip, but mostly for cards which are physically x4. Those would work in my v4.0 x1 slot that is physically x16, but I also found that IOCrest had made a card that is physically v4.0 x1, so I bought that on Aliexpress:

https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/1005008337245217.html

Delivery was pretty rapid. I have not done any real testing, but it seems to work as expected. I now have it running in a v4 x1 slot on one of my Asus Rog Strix X570-E Gaming WiFi boards.

Another consideration is that if you have motherboards with PCIe v3.0 x8 slots available, you can get 40 Gbit/s Infiniband cards to put in them instead. That is what I did, and the price for that was fairly similar to getting 10 Gbit/s Ethernet. I did a presentation on how I did this for my local Linux users group (prices included), which is available from my web server here:

http://www2.jsw.gen.nz/Home_Infiniband

nzkc

1573 posts

Uber Geek

#3356765 23-Mar-2025 23:14

Since you mention the GWN7665 make sure you've checked out my post here: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=66&topicid=318248

Grandstream still havent officially released a fix. Though the patch they sent me does resolve the problem. However; it seems to come with a wee bit of a performance bottleneck with VLAN tagged SSIDs. I can get about 500Mb/sec over the VLAN'd SSID but definitely not full speed either.

Other than that I do love the APs. Depends to you whether it makes it a show stopper or not.

KevlarCoated

23 posts

Geek

#3356788 24-Mar-2025 07:19

fe31nz:

It can be a bit of a problem getting 10 Gbit/s Ethernet adapters that will fit on modern motherboards.

Thanks for tip, my existing server is a bit older so has a Gen3 4x link, Im also not using a graphics card in it so plenty of space there. Definitely something to keep in mind when I build my desktop

nzkc:

Since you mention the GWN7665 make sure you've checked out my post here: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=66&topicid=318248

Thanks for this, I did read this, it does make the value of the AP a bit questionable since buying it is just hoping for a future fix but it's also not a deal breaker since 500Mb/s should be sufficient for most things that will be VLANd on wireless anyway.

raytaylor

4017 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#3356827 24-Mar-2025 09:49

We have stopped selling ubiquiti to residential customers because of a mix of price and annoying design choices
And having very good results with grandstream.

However if you already have ubiquiti equipment, i'd continue down that path.

Ray Taylor

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dasimpsonsrule

147 posts

Master Geek

#3357094 25-Mar-2025 08:00

Interesting timing, I've just bought a GWN7665, a GWN7822P and a GWN7002 to upgrade my home network. The 7822 and 7002 are sitting on my desk at work so I can test them out.

The 7822 switch seems to work just fine. I haven't tried any of the layer 3 routing stuff, but the standard managed switch features seem to work just fine. Worth pointing out for your use case, those 4x 10G SFP+ ports can only have 2x 10GBASE-T SFPs because of the amount of heat they put out, so you would need to use either fibre or DAC cables.
Other thing worth pointing out is you need the firmware updated to be able to get all the advertised features. Out of the box, the 6GHz on the 7665 just didn't work at all for me. I thought it was broken, but updating the firmware fixed it.

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KevlarCoated

23 posts

Geek

#3357099 25-Mar-2025 08:29

raytaylor:

We have stopped selling ubiquiti to residential customers because of a mix of price and annoying design choices
And having very good results with grandstream.

Thanks for the insight, Im taking this as my chance to move away from Ubiquiti before going any further down that rabbit hole (even though Im not replacing the UDM just yet.

dasimpsonsrule:

Interesting timing, I've just bought a GWN7665, a GWN7822P and a GWN7002 to upgrade my home network. The 7822 and 7002 are sitting on my desk at work so I can test them out.

Thanks for the note on the SFPs, I was planning to use DAC cables to the servers so I should be fine.

Where did you end up buying from? It looks like PB tech is the cheapest for the AP and switch, did you find anyone cheaper?

nzkc

1573 posts

Uber Geek

#3357113 25-Mar-2025 09:21

KevlarCoated:

Where did you end up buying from? It looks like PB tech is the cheapest for the AP and switch, did you find anyone cheaper?

I got my APs from pp.co.nz. Have bought several things from them and always been quick delivery. Have not had to return anything so cant speak for that side of things.

allio

886 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3357316 25-Mar-2025 16:29

fe31nz:

I also found that IOCrest had made a card that is physically v4.0 x1, so I bought that on Aliexpress:

Amazing - I have been waiting for someone to manufacture this product for years. Absolute necessity for 10GBe to get any significant adoption given that most desktop motherboards only have 1x slots in addition to the 16x graphics card slots these days, all the rest is used up on NVMe. Thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention.

Also keen to hear more impressions of Grandstream as I am looking at this for a network overhaul for my in-laws. I had planned to go Unifi as I'm rather happy with my own, but my goodness what has happened to the pricing? There are basically no APs to buy under $400 in NZ (where are the U6 and U7 Lites?). Meanwhile you can get Grandstream APs of an acceptable speed (AX3000) for close to a quarter the price, and every bit of gear contains a built in controller. I noticed they have an unmanaged 5 port 2.5Gbe POE switch for about $120 too, which is perfect for a small home and unmatched by any other manufacturer (other than generic stuff on Aliexpress) as far as I can tell.

dasimpsonsrule

147 posts

Master Geek

#3357328 25-Mar-2025 17:36

KevlarCoated:

Where did you end up buying from? It looks like PB tech is the cheapest for the AP and switch, did you find anyone cheaper?

I got the AP from PBTech, and the other gear from Wesco Anixter via work's account, not sure if they sell to the public sorry.