Hi, hope all is well. This is my first time setting up a network and it all seems simple but at times during research seems very complicated. Just looking for a few tips. I bought a netgear nighthawk router + (2) GS748T) - Managed switch’s + netgear access points (7) Is there anything special I need to do or do I just connect the nighthawk to the switch, connect all my Ethernet cords to their respective drops, then connect the APs and I’m done? How do I bridge the two switches? Or should I have 2 cables from the nighthawk and have 1 go to each switch. Do I need to configure anything complicated as a novice? Or will it mostly be plug and play? Read a lot about everything and just want to make sure as I am trying to do the turn up tomorrow.
Wax214v2 access points Roaming seamlessly would be important
I understand how to connect everything physically, just worried about all the ports on the switch working (for any device - laptop, pc, printer etc) and then configuring 7 ports to work seamlessly with the access points. I watched a vid on configuring the APs and takes about 2 minutes (not sure about the roaming feature) but I want to make sure I don’t need some special config on those 7 ports. Thanks in advance
Switches with a lot of ports, what else should be connected on wired LAN?
Intentionally no PoE+ (or a PoE++) switch?
Intentionally APs and switches with Gigabit Ethernet ports only?
AP without cloud management (like the WAX214v2) can be configured for WPA2-PSK only. For WPA3-SAE,
Intentionally a router with WiFi which can't participate on seamless roaming different from just WPA2-PSK only?
What expectations do you have in the number of wireless devices, and wireless performance for the wireless devices?
As long as you only need WPA2-PSK, you can use the locally configurable WAX214v2 (and don't worry about the local power supplies for each access point without any PoE+ to power the APs), for WPA3-SAE and seamless roaming, thee is no way around Insight managed WAX6xx (or WBE75x) access points. However, all these AP models require at least 2.5 GbE Ethernet ports on the switches (and the wired backhaul of course), the WBE75x operates on 10 GbE ports - on slower switch infrastructure, this looks like a waste of technology.
Netgear offers free Pro WiFi Design Services for design assistance and specifying router, switches, access points.
Sorry, it's a little bit to late now if you have go and install all this tomorrow: However, I would still suggest to get some advise and ideas before randomly ordering switches and access points.
