House Network

An older house with knob-and-tube wiring, a panel with no headroom, and Wi-Fi that was one router in a corner. Nothing in the homelab is reliable if the building under it is not.

Do the boring layers once and properly: power first, then structured cabling, then the network. If every run home-runs to one place and is labelled and tested before the walls close, the network becomes something you never think about again.

Electrical: the panel upgraded to 200A service with arc-fault and GFCI breakers, the knob-and-tube replaced with modern grounded cable, and new circuits for the office and the rack. Low voltage: thirteen Cat6 home runs in a star topology to one rack, through a keystone patch panel and a brush panel to the switch, with service loops left above the rack and surge protection on every run that leaves the building. Network: a UniFi gateway, a 24-port PoE switch, three ceiling access points indoors and a mesh point outside, with UniFi Protect on PoE. Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi bridges Protect into HomeKit. Every run carries one ID, written on the jacket and the keystone at both ends, and recorded against its switch port.

Done. The PoE load was budgeted at about 103 W for the access points, cameras and doorbell, well inside what the switch can deliver, with spare PoE+ ports left for whatever comes next.