When figuring out what you need in your home network, it's easy to get caught thinking of things you want rather than things you need. For the vast majority of homes, all you really need is a good Wi-Fi router and maybe some Ethernet cables to run wired connections to devices that can benefit from them or to get your connection to parts of your home that don't get a good Wi-Fi signal. That said, sometimes the best plan is to go for overkill and spec out more networking than you currently need because you never know what the future holds, except that it will likely increase bandwidth requirements. For those who want to push the boat out and bring the data center home with them, here are some of our favorite networking setups that are more of a want than a need.

4 Faster than 10GbE networking

It's not going to help with Netflix but it's cool

I still maintain that Wi-Fi is fast enough these days for most internet users, especially with the median broadband download speed in the U.S. being 242.38Mbps. The rising adoption of Wi-Fi 7 devices might not raise home network speeds for every device, but the new standard does come with other benefits, including improved latency and more ways to counter congested airwaves. That said, I know some of you want to wire your devices up in your homes, and there's nothing wrong with that approach, either.

That said, the decision over what wired speed to aim for is another story. If you're planning the network cabling for a home to be built, or even if you're thinking about pulling cables through the walls of an existing one, you've got a choice between copper Ethernet or fiber optic cables. Each has its benefits and drawbacks, but for a true overkill setup, why not pull both through the walls at the same time? The price of cable is relatively negligible compared to the labor costs of getting it installed, and you have more options for networking equipment to use. Maybe you want to use the copper cabling for now and wait for 40GbE and 100GbE fiber equipment to drop in price. That's doable, and if you're doing it, you might as well do it right. Or in this case, overkill with some over-provisioning for future use.

3 Ex-enterprise hardware

Your power bill will hate you

Do you get the itch to upgrade when you see someone post their network rack on social media? I do, and I have to restrain those urges because I don't really have the space, the time, or the willingness to pay the power bill. Not to mention the initial costs of enterprise-level gear, which is always a sticker shock. But there is one way to lower those costs, and that's by picking up ex-enterprise gear when it's been decommissioned by the companies who first purchased it. It's always at a significantly slashed price point, because you're essentially paying the company for disposing of it, instead of them having to pay to get the equipment recycled.

While you can get some stellar deals, older enterprise hardware comes with a couple of caveats. It's often power-hungry, as every generation of hardware since then has improved in efficiency. It will also be loud, but so is all enterprise hardware. Rackmount servers use high-speed fans to push cooling air through the racks, and the sound levels aren't really something worried about for the data center. But if you absolutely need a home server or five, buying ex-enterprise hardware certainly takes the sting out of the cost of ownership.

2 Self-hosted game servers

Bring the cloud into your home

If you've got a NAS that supports Docker containers, you can spin up your own game servers for you and your friends to play on with a relatively low investment in time, energy, and cost. However, the low-power CPUs that most NAS devices use aren't suited for heavy use, and that might have you looking for more powerful options. You could spin up some servers on your desktop PC, or maybe you have enough spare hardware kicking around to build a serviceable server PC. That would be enough power for several game servers like Minecraft and other important services like TeamSpeak.

If you want to be the envy of your techie friends, the aforementioned ex-enterprise gear would work well for game servers and possibly was used for that before decommissioning. I always wanted a home server to do that when I was heavily into playing CounterStrike, as one of my close friends had a LAN setup in their spare room with a half dozen PCs networked to a central server. Or you could get new equipment, as the specifications needed for a few game servers aren't that high. Either way you go with the hardware, you can also do more than just run game servers, like running home media servers, photo and video backups, and keeping your other devices backed up on a regular schedule.

1 Wired APs on every floor

Pulling cable through your walls is not fun at all

For the best Wi-Fi signal throughout your home, it's recommended to run a wired backhaul to every AP from your main router, and a number of APs that makes sense for your horizontal and vertical layout. That's how schools and businesses do things, and it makes sense for the number of users and devices on their networks at one time. That's overkill for most homes, with modern building methods favoring wood frames and fewer metal obstructions in the walls, but if you're going to go all out, it's the way to go.

Let's talk about some rough napkin math. The average house size built in 2022 was up to 2,299 square feet, although the statistics I found didn't break that down into how many floors. My townhome is about that size but spread over three floors, and I've got two APs, one on the first floor and one on the middle floor. That's plenty of coverage for most of the rooms, although one room on the third floor has a little dead zone that putting a third AP on the top floor would fix. The average Redditor would also agree with that setup, with many using two APs in similar-sized homes. The only thing to remember if using one AP per floor is that you might want to lower the transmitting power slightly on all of them so they're not interfering with each other. Do you need them wired in? Not always, but it does provide more wireless bandwidth for your devices, and a more stable backhaul for consistency.

There's no one-size-fits-all solution for home networks

Most users don't need any of the networking devices mentioned here, but there are always exceptions. If you want multi-mode fiber runs to every room in your home, AP's on every landing or section of your sprawling house, and power-hungry network racks stuffed with servers, switches, and other enterprise-level gear, go for it! Normal consumer-level networking doesn't always work so well if you've got a large property, or it's spread out ranch-style rather than the townhouses and other tightly-packed homes that city suburbs are filling up with. If you know your home needs these things, get them. Just remember, not every internet user has the same needs as you or the same desire to become their own home sysadmin.