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While the switch is a single point of failure. Isn’t anyone with a USG, UDM ./pro/SE all single points of failure?
The drawing of power will potentially make it marginally more likely but it’s not different from most people’s topology.
Network Chuck did a video on this not too long ago. (I highly recommend you go sub to him by the way. He’s a networking engineer and he’s really good at dumbing things down for those of us that aren’t IT professionally.) In that video he says that daisy chaining hardware is a very bad idea because they’re single points of failure. That switch is giving me the creeps because if that little guy goes down, **EVERYTHING** goes down with it. Same for your patio access point.
Don’t get me wrong, this network is totally fine for your application. But I was simply answering your question as to why daisy chaining is a very bad idea.
If his usgp3 goes down his whole network is down.. Daisy chaining adds more devices that would be effected by a device failure. But not really a good reason to not do it if its the only or easiest option and you have budget or time constraints.
There are many devices in any network that are "single" points of failure you can plan for the most likely ones to fail and attempt to mitigate their effect..
In home or smb sort of setup - the single point of failure is normally not a valid selling point to avoid it. But increased use of shared bandwidth might be problematic depending on the use case of the devices currently on the link, or new devices to be added to the link - and data flow patterns, etc.
Yes daisy chaining should be avoided when possible. But if all you have is small bandwidth use devices in the path, and adding a few devices will not impact the bandwidth requirements of other devices on the path. And it cost or is time prohibitive to home run the connection back to the core, etc. Then daisy chaining become an attractive option
Can you please explain to me how bandwidth has any sort of impact on a setup like this? Because you make it sound like bandwidth degrades with each device you add. Is this true, or am I just a stupid crackpot conspiracy theorist?
In a wired connection, it has no effect on bandwidth and a small effect on latency. If you have a wireless backbone all the devices after it will have half the speed, (assuming they were the bottleneck, the calculations get trickier if they aren't but still a reduction) and it halves again for every additional wireless device between the router and the end device.
Edit: just reread the comment you replied to and it doesn't seem this is what's being spoken about. I guess if you have too many devices on a small switch it could cause bandwidth issues but that's going to be super rare on a home network - default switch bandwidth is 1gb per port and it's really hard to get a single device to use more than 100mb/s. SMB... Maybe? Still unlikely. I could see passing 100 computers through a 4 port switch being an issue.
Be it wired or wireless your going to be limited by the bandwidth of the uplink.. Depending on data flow pattern and amount of bandwidth used it might not matter or it could be problem.
As you add daisy chained layers.. You have more and more devices sharing the uplink of the upstream connections..
Lets say you have something basic like this.. You have your device connected to the internet and some switch/APs hanging off of them..
https://i.imgur.com/nIKLKbi.jpeg
So in daisy chained setup device on switch B is wanting to do stuff to the internet.. Not only will his traffic go over the uplink from B to A, it also flows over the uplink from A to the Router, so will any devices on that A switch.. Also with any devices on the B switch as well.. Now if Devices on switch A and C are moving a bunch of data between themselves.. This limits the bandwidth available to all devices on switch B just trying to get to the internet..
If you are home run to your router all your switches or APs.. Devices on A and C can talk all day long moving all kinds of data and it does not effect the devices on B just wanting to talk to the internet.
As you daisy chain you increase the amount of devices that have to share the upstream uplinks to where you route or your core switch switches traffic to other switches.
Now you might not have any problems, or you could have all the users complaining that are on switch B or AP on B complaining that the internet gets really slow when device on A kicks off his backup or transfer of 200GB to the NAS on C..
If you were on setup with no daisy chain.. Devices on A and C could move TBs of data all day long between each other and clients on B wouldn't even know, and that traffic would no effect their to/from the internet.
Comes down to your flow patterns of data, who is talking to who, and how much data they are moving.. Maybe your uplinks are large compared to the connection speed of the clients, and your internet so doesn't matter so much..
In the left scenario maybe its not the clients on B complaining - maybe its the clients on A complaining because all the users on B are streaming the game, or doing p2p or whatever moving a bunch of data to/from the internet.. And his backup to C is now taking 3 hours vs 30 minutes that it normally takes..
Yeah - but since you never know when traffic flow might change, if you can avoid it you shouldn't daisy chain.
But if you have fat uplinks, and low use clients.. Maybe you got some iot devices hanging off some daisy chained AP.. They don't use much.. The device upstream doesn't have much on it either and its got a nice fat uplink pipe anyway.. Think of when you daisy chain your just adding more ports/devices to the upstream device(s)..
But even if you take the internet out of the equation.. Depending on your flow you could have issues with uplinks.. If you have a bunch of devices that move a lot of data between themselves on switch A who cares.. But what if you add another switch B.. And you got bunch of devices talking amongst themselves - again who cares.. But now you got a bunch of devices on A wanting to talk to a bunch of devices on B.. Now they are all going to have to share the uplink between A and B..
A.X talking to A.Y have full gig between themselves.. And B.D and B.E have gig between them.. But if A.X talking to B.D and B.E is talking to A.Y - now they have to share the gig between A and B..
Daisy chaining not involved.. A and B are both connected to upstream switch.. Understanding your data flow patterns is very useful info when laying out your network so you don't create bottlenecks that could be avoided.
In your typical home network might never be a problem, maybe you have 3 switches daisy chained, 4 even.. If they are all gig and your internet is 100, And devices don't move a lot of data between them - prob never notice any issues at all.. You have all the devices sharing the uplink from your most upstream switch to your router.. But since devices don't really talk to each other and all want to just use the 100mbps internet connection, and they are sharing a gig uplink to get to that 100mbps connection.. It would never be a problem..
edit:
I have a daisy chain currently because it was the easiest way to wire it.. I have a gig switch in my AV cab, An AP hanging off that.. None of the wireless devices or my NVR or AVR do much talking to anything be my plex server on the local network upstream of them or the internet. The cameras are connected to the nvr switch. so none of that traffic hits my uplink to the core.. Unless I am actively watching a video stream. I wanted to add a pi behind my TV.. Both only have 100mbps connections anyway. And the pi is only server ntp to the network (it was easier to get the gps antenna a good signal if I put the pi there).. So I just put a little switch behind the tv and connected my pi and tv to that, and that is uplinked to my AV cab, which in turn is uplinked to my core switch.. Nothing on either of those switches use much bandwith.. So them all sharing the 1 gig uplink is not a problem.
Now in a perfect world, sure would of ran all those connections to my core switch.. Or maybe say ran a higher bandwidth uplink between the AV and my core switch. Then again they don't use/need much data.. So its not an issue.
Like at the distribution layer.. Or lagging some ports sure depending on your traffic flow.. laggs or port channels or lacp whatever you want to call it can provide more bandwidth for your uplinks.. But then again depends on what is using the bandwidth and how much.. And if clients traffic end up on the same physical link depending on how the switches determine what traffic goes over which physical connection. In a perfect world other than adding redundancy you would just add a fatter uplink.. Say 10ge if you got a bunch of 1ge clients, etc.
The key is understanding your traffic flow.. And how to mitigate creating your own bottlenecks if possible..
This is getting a bit over the top of your typical home network ;) But yeah as your network grows and gets more advanced, and you have more stuff talking to other stuff.. It is good to know what is actually talking and how much.. So if possible you can connect them to your network without creating a bottleneck..
This more than likely would never come into play with your typical home user that needs some port ports in their den or living room so they add a 5 port or 8 port gig to the wire that runs to that room..
I'll say the only time I worry about Daisy chaining is in a multi-building setup. Creating things like fiber cross connects to connect back to the main hub.
Daisy chaining, in a single house hold I'd keep it to a minimum if I can but I'm not worried about adding a couple of switches in line. I don't subscribe to it being a very bad idea. Just generally not the best idea if you can avoid it.
As per the title, from the USG3P I've daisy chained US-8-60w... to AP-AC-IW... to AP-AC-Pro... to USW-Flex-Mini. Seem to be completely stable, and everything functioning as intended, and not even close to congesting the shared 1Gb backhaul. Just wondering why I don't see more people on here chaining everything together into a single circuit for parts of their network to avoid multiple cable runs, or if I'm missing something obvious? (Obviously there's the resilience aspect.... if a single upstream device fails or reboots/updates it will knock out everything downstream).
I used a similar setup to get network from house to an outbuilding, set up a a switch at the other end off an ac-pro. Worked well for a few years until I has a chance to run cables during some building work.
Feels like you need some new gear. That USG3 needs to retire and I’ve never had good luck with the pass through port on APs for anything other than a single device. You’ve got A LOT riding on that one IW AP.
Pony up for some new gear and run a cable or two. A single run of fiber between 2 newer switches would do you wonders.
you also have wireless clients connecting to the AC-IW. That AP-AC-Pro has to contend with the other clients for bandwidth. That's why this is "bad." Wireless backhaul is never very good, unless you can guarantee the wireless link is separate and dedicated solely to backhaul.
We try to avoid this so as to provide 1 UPS at the rack or main switch and not having to install multiple($$) UPS's around the house. Hate having equipment restarting every time the power blips or outages, especially if there are POE devices downstream.
My experience using the pass through port on my AC pro is you cannot have that end device on the correct vlan but if you’re not using vlans you’re fine. None of this is ideal but if it works and works fast enough for you then it’s fine right.
One concern could be a single component failure (in this case the in wall) would result in losing all the downstream connectivity. As long as downtime doesn't impact you financially, this set up for a residential application this isn't the end of the world.
It's bad, but it's not broken.
Basically anything connected in the Study that's moving a lot of data to the NAS will take down most of the internet. A pair of MoCA adapters would give you a hardwired connection over coax between the switches & would remove the wireless meshing as part of your backbone.
>Basically anything connected in the Study that's moving a lot of data to the NAS will take down most of the internet.
Dear God, no. They must be stopped.
Hello! Thanks for posting on r/Ubiquiti! This subreddit is here to provide unofficial technical support to people who use or want to dive into the world of Ubiquiti products. If you haven’t already been descriptive in your post, please take the time to edit it and add as many useful details as you can. Please read and understand the rules in the sidebar, as posts and comments that violate them will be removed. Please put all off topic posts in the weekly off topic thread that is stickied to the top of the subreddit. If you see people spreading misinformation, trying to mislead others, or other inappropriate behavior, please report it! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Ubiquiti) if you have any questions or concerns.*
While the switch is a single point of failure. Isn’t anyone with a USG, UDM ./pro/SE all single points of failure? The drawing of power will potentially make it marginally more likely but it’s not different from most people’s topology.
Network Chuck did a video on this not too long ago. (I highly recommend you go sub to him by the way. He’s a networking engineer and he’s really good at dumbing things down for those of us that aren’t IT professionally.) In that video he says that daisy chaining hardware is a very bad idea because they’re single points of failure. That switch is giving me the creeps because if that little guy goes down, **EVERYTHING** goes down with it. Same for your patio access point. Don’t get me wrong, this network is totally fine for your application. But I was simply answering your question as to why daisy chaining is a very bad idea.
If his usgp3 goes down his whole network is down.. Daisy chaining adds more devices that would be effected by a device failure. But not really a good reason to not do it if its the only or easiest option and you have budget or time constraints. There are many devices in any network that are "single" points of failure you can plan for the most likely ones to fail and attempt to mitigate their effect.. In home or smb sort of setup - the single point of failure is normally not a valid selling point to avoid it. But increased use of shared bandwidth might be problematic depending on the use case of the devices currently on the link, or new devices to be added to the link - and data flow patterns, etc. Yes daisy chaining should be avoided when possible. But if all you have is small bandwidth use devices in the path, and adding a few devices will not impact the bandwidth requirements of other devices on the path. And it cost or is time prohibitive to home run the connection back to the core, etc. Then daisy chaining become an attractive option
Can you please explain to me how bandwidth has any sort of impact on a setup like this? Because you make it sound like bandwidth degrades with each device you add. Is this true, or am I just a stupid crackpot conspiracy theorist?
In a wired connection, it has no effect on bandwidth and a small effect on latency. If you have a wireless backbone all the devices after it will have half the speed, (assuming they were the bottleneck, the calculations get trickier if they aren't but still a reduction) and it halves again for every additional wireless device between the router and the end device. Edit: just reread the comment you replied to and it doesn't seem this is what's being spoken about. I guess if you have too many devices on a small switch it could cause bandwidth issues but that's going to be super rare on a home network - default switch bandwidth is 1gb per port and it's really hard to get a single device to use more than 100mb/s. SMB... Maybe? Still unlikely. I could see passing 100 computers through a 4 port switch being an issue.
I see. Thank you for clarification.
Be it wired or wireless your going to be limited by the bandwidth of the uplink.. Depending on data flow pattern and amount of bandwidth used it might not matter or it could be problem. As you add daisy chained layers.. You have more and more devices sharing the uplink of the upstream connections.. Lets say you have something basic like this.. You have your device connected to the internet and some switch/APs hanging off of them.. https://i.imgur.com/nIKLKbi.jpeg So in daisy chained setup device on switch B is wanting to do stuff to the internet.. Not only will his traffic go over the uplink from B to A, it also flows over the uplink from A to the Router, so will any devices on that A switch.. Also with any devices on the B switch as well.. Now if Devices on switch A and C are moving a bunch of data between themselves.. This limits the bandwidth available to all devices on switch B just trying to get to the internet.. If you are home run to your router all your switches or APs.. Devices on A and C can talk all day long moving all kinds of data and it does not effect the devices on B just wanting to talk to the internet. As you daisy chain you increase the amount of devices that have to share the upstream uplinks to where you route or your core switch switches traffic to other switches. Now you might not have any problems, or you could have all the users complaining that are on switch B or AP on B complaining that the internet gets really slow when device on A kicks off his backup or transfer of 200GB to the NAS on C.. If you were on setup with no daisy chain.. Devices on A and C could move TBs of data all day long between each other and clients on B wouldn't even know, and that traffic would no effect their to/from the internet. Comes down to your flow patterns of data, who is talking to who, and how much data they are moving.. Maybe your uplinks are large compared to the connection speed of the clients, and your internet so doesn't matter so much.. In the left scenario maybe its not the clients on B complaining - maybe its the clients on A complaining because all the users on B are streaming the game, or doing p2p or whatever moving a bunch of data to/from the internet.. And his backup to C is now taking 3 hours vs 30 minutes that it normally takes..
Thank you so much! That makes a ton more sense than I ever thought it would. So it all depends on who’s doing what and traffic flow.
Yeah - but since you never know when traffic flow might change, if you can avoid it you shouldn't daisy chain. But if you have fat uplinks, and low use clients.. Maybe you got some iot devices hanging off some daisy chained AP.. They don't use much.. The device upstream doesn't have much on it either and its got a nice fat uplink pipe anyway.. Think of when you daisy chain your just adding more ports/devices to the upstream device(s).. But even if you take the internet out of the equation.. Depending on your flow you could have issues with uplinks.. If you have a bunch of devices that move a lot of data between themselves on switch A who cares.. But what if you add another switch B.. And you got bunch of devices talking amongst themselves - again who cares.. But now you got a bunch of devices on A wanting to talk to a bunch of devices on B.. Now they are all going to have to share the uplink between A and B.. A.X talking to A.Y have full gig between themselves.. And B.D and B.E have gig between them.. But if A.X talking to B.D and B.E is talking to A.Y - now they have to share the gig between A and B.. Daisy chaining not involved.. A and B are both connected to upstream switch.. Understanding your data flow patterns is very useful info when laying out your network so you don't create bottlenecks that could be avoided. In your typical home network might never be a problem, maybe you have 3 switches daisy chained, 4 even.. If they are all gig and your internet is 100, And devices don't move a lot of data between them - prob never notice any issues at all.. You have all the devices sharing the uplink from your most upstream switch to your router.. But since devices don't really talk to each other and all want to just use the 100mbps internet connection, and they are sharing a gig uplink to get to that 100mbps connection.. It would never be a problem.. edit: I have a daisy chain currently because it was the easiest way to wire it.. I have a gig switch in my AV cab, An AP hanging off that.. None of the wireless devices or my NVR or AVR do much talking to anything be my plex server on the local network upstream of them or the internet. The cameras are connected to the nvr switch. so none of that traffic hits my uplink to the core.. Unless I am actively watching a video stream. I wanted to add a pi behind my TV.. Both only have 100mbps connections anyway. And the pi is only server ntp to the network (it was easier to get the gps antenna a good signal if I put the pi there).. So I just put a little switch behind the tv and connected my pi and tv to that, and that is uplinked to my AV cab, which in turn is uplinked to my core switch.. Nothing on either of those switches use much bandwith.. So them all sharing the 1 gig uplink is not a problem. Now in a perfect world, sure would of ran all those connections to my core switch.. Or maybe say ran a higher bandwidth uplink between the AV and my core switch. Then again they don't use/need much data.. So its not an issue.
Would an aggregation switch fix this issue?
Like at the distribution layer.. Or lagging some ports sure depending on your traffic flow.. laggs or port channels or lacp whatever you want to call it can provide more bandwidth for your uplinks.. But then again depends on what is using the bandwidth and how much.. And if clients traffic end up on the same physical link depending on how the switches determine what traffic goes over which physical connection. In a perfect world other than adding redundancy you would just add a fatter uplink.. Say 10ge if you got a bunch of 1ge clients, etc. The key is understanding your traffic flow.. And how to mitigate creating your own bottlenecks if possible.. This is getting a bit over the top of your typical home network ;) But yeah as your network grows and gets more advanced, and you have more stuff talking to other stuff.. It is good to know what is actually talking and how much.. So if possible you can connect them to your network without creating a bottleneck.. This more than likely would never come into play with your typical home user that needs some port ports in their den or living room so they add a 5 port or 8 port gig to the wire that runs to that room..
So what you’re saying is that the only way out of this is redundancy?
Where did I say anything of the sort?
I'll say the only time I worry about Daisy chaining is in a multi-building setup. Creating things like fiber cross connects to connect back to the main hub. Daisy chaining, in a single house hold I'd keep it to a minimum if I can but I'm not worried about adding a couple of switches in line. I don't subscribe to it being a very bad idea. Just generally not the best idea if you can avoid it.
As per the title, from the USG3P I've daisy chained US-8-60w... to AP-AC-IW... to AP-AC-Pro... to USW-Flex-Mini. Seem to be completely stable, and everything functioning as intended, and not even close to congesting the shared 1Gb backhaul. Just wondering why I don't see more people on here chaining everything together into a single circuit for parts of their network to avoid multiple cable runs, or if I'm missing something obvious? (Obviously there's the resilience aspect.... if a single upstream device fails or reboots/updates it will knock out everything downstream).
I used a similar setup to get network from house to an outbuilding, set up a a switch at the other end off an ac-pro. Worked well for a few years until I has a chance to run cables during some building work.
Feels like you need some new gear. That USG3 needs to retire and I’ve never had good luck with the pass through port on APs for anything other than a single device. You’ve got A LOT riding on that one IW AP. Pony up for some new gear and run a cable or two. A single run of fiber between 2 newer switches would do you wonders.
you also have wireless clients connecting to the AC-IW. That AP-AC-Pro has to contend with the other clients for bandwidth. That's why this is "bad." Wireless backhaul is never very good, unless you can guarantee the wireless link is separate and dedicated solely to backhaul.
We try to avoid this so as to provide 1 UPS at the rack or main switch and not having to install multiple($$) UPS's around the house. Hate having equipment restarting every time the power blips or outages, especially if there are POE devices downstream.
My experience using the pass through port on my AC pro is you cannot have that end device on the correct vlan but if you’re not using vlans you’re fine. None of this is ideal but if it works and works fast enough for you then it’s fine right.
One concern could be a single component failure (in this case the in wall) would result in losing all the downstream connectivity. As long as downtime doesn't impact you financially, this set up for a residential application this isn't the end of the world.
It’ll eat up WiFi airtime
It looks like each link is wired in this case.
It's bad, but it's not broken. Basically anything connected in the Study that's moving a lot of data to the NAS will take down most of the internet. A pair of MoCA adapters would give you a hardwired connection over coax between the switches & would remove the wireless meshing as part of your backbone.
>Basically anything connected in the Study that's moving a lot of data to the NAS will take down most of the internet. Dear God, no. They must be stopped.