Redundant routes between switches

home-networkingnetworkingwireless-access-point

I have a relatively simple (home) network setup.

Downstairs:

Ubiquiti Edgerouter X
Ubiquiti AP (NanoHD)
+clients (wired and wireless)

Upstairs

Unmanaged gigabit switch
Ubiquiti AP (AC Lite)
+ clients (wired and wireless)

Downstairs the router is wired to the AP, and is also wired to a powerline plug to connect to the upstairs switch.

Upstairs the AP is wired into the unmanaged switch.

My issue is that the powerline adapters every so often will drop their connection, requiring a power cycle to recover. The Ubiquiti support wired backhaul but I haven't enabled it (yet).

I would like the network to be tolerant of any failures of the powerline plugs. If both the upstairs AP and the powerline effectively are connecting upstairs to downstairs through the upstairs switch, will that a) work, b) will clients be able to 'get to downstairs' and out to the internet through the remaining "good" link (i.e. either the wired AP backhaul or the powerline) in the event of a failure?

If not what is my best upgrade option – will a managed switch help me here? I'm trying to avoid putting holes through the walls by running an ethernet cable.

Best Answer

If you connect two switches on two connections simultaneously you will create a loop (simply speaking two possible paths your "network packages" can take). Theoretically, there are three possibilities to solve this, assuming you currently (or future) switch support them:

  • "loop prevention" (there are several implementations, start here for more info)
  • use link aggregation
  • separate the two connections via vlan

Now to the practical bit:

  • loop prevention should work fine and is supported by a lot of routers
  • link aggregation is rather theoretical since I haven't heard of any solutions to aggregate different types of "connections"
  • vlan will be tricky since you need to "reconnect" them via a router this has the considerable drawback of fragmenting your network and will be much more complicated to set it up
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