Home Network Infrastructure
Your home should be wired with an ethernet backbone. I know that today's fun lies with WiFi, but the reality is that WiFi can be spotty and bandwitdh is never that great. If you have a multi-level home, or just think stone / bricks walls, or even worse, concrete walls (with metal rebars inside…) your WiFi will be shitty for the most part.
Do yourself a favor and pull those CAT6e (or better) cables around your house.
My setup is a bit complex, but i have to cover a three stories early 1900 home with thick stone/bricks walls and the house itself is distributed in an uncomfortable (for WiFi propagation) shape. From the place where my ISPs get into the house, where the ISPs gateways are located, i have a first L3 switch (the central hub). Each floor has at least one “floor switch” connected to this central hub. The gound floor, which is bigger than the above ones, has itself one L3 switch to reach the outermost side. No, it's not larger than 100m, but the walls routing was challenging due to poor planning.
Overall i did choose, and maybe was not the best idea, not to have a central switching panel but instead, work on a tree of L3 switches. It works pretty well so far.
┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐
│ISP 1 │ │ISP 2 │
│ Gateway │ │ Gateway │
└───┬─────┘ └─────┬───┘
│ │
│ ┌─────────┐ │
└────┼Firewall ├──┘ ┌──────────────────┐
└───────┬─┘ │2nd floor WiFi AP │
│ └──────┬───────────┘
┌───┼──────────────────────┐ │
│ Central Hub (L3 switch) ┼──────────────┤
└─────────────┬────────────┘ │
│ ┌──────┼───────────┐
│ │1st floor WiFi AP │
│ └──────────────────┘
│
│
┌──────────┴──────────┐
│ Ground Floor L3 Hub │
└─────────┬───────────┘
│
┌──────────────────┐ │ ┌──────────────────┐
│1st floor WiFi AP1┼──────────────┼───────────────┼1st floor WiFi AP2│
└──────────────────┘ │ └──────────────────┘
│
│
┌────────┴─────────┐
│External WiFi AP │
└──────────────────┘
Why wired? Because WiFi is spotty and low-bandwidth. Don't get fooled by the latest buzzwords about WiFi, it will never be as good as wired. So if you can lay down a good Ethernet cable scross your home, do so.
For the wired part of the network, use good quality cable! As for the L3 wired switches, no need to go too fancy or expensive. Ensure they are at least Gigabit Ethernet capable (no real need to go 2.5Gbps or 10Gbps, but if you have the budget, ok), and small enough to fit where they need to go. Ideally, you want them hidden away. Pay attention to the dimension of the power brick too, as they might be very bulky on cheap switches.
For the Wireless part of the network, go with OpenWRT capable access points, and flash immediately OpenWRT (see here for details on how to flash OpenWRT) and your life will be immensely better (joking, a bit). Fast Transitioning, my beloved!
See this page for more details on how to layout your WiFi infrastructure and this page on hints and tips on how to properly configure your OpenWRT access points.