A Network Built on Purpose
Cameras, smart devices, guests and your actual work, each kept in their own lane.
Building size and device count, and whether existing cabling can be reused. Often combined with WiFi coverage work, which brings the total down against booking the two separately.
Typical range, not a quote. Your price comes from the free estimate.
The problem
Everything in the building shares one network. The doorbell, the thermostat, the TV, the cameras, the kid's console, the guest who came over last spring, and the laptop with your tax returns and client files on it. They can all reach each other. Nobody planned that, it just accumulated one device at a time, and a home network installation that stops at getting everything online is how you end up here.
Why it matters
The cheapest device on your network decides how secure the whole thing is. A twenty dollar camera from an unknown brand, running software that stopped getting updates two years ago, sits on the same flat network as the machine you do your banking on. If that camera is compromised, and cheap cameras are compromised constantly, whoever is on it can see and reach everything else in the building. Splitting the network fixes this properly: cameras go in a lane where they can record but cannot reach your laptop, smart devices go in a lane with no path to your files, guests get internet and nothing else, and your work sits in its own protected space. It costs almost nothing extra at install time and it is genuinely painful to retrofit later, which is why it is worth doing when the network is being touched anyway. This is the design half of a home network installation: the plan, the lanes and the switching, decided before anything is bought. Where the signal has to reach is the other half, and that is at WiFi & Coverage.
Scope
What we actually do
- 01A plan drawn from how the building is actually used, before any equipment is chosen
- 02Separate lanes for cameras, smart home devices, guests, work and personal use, so a problem in one cannot spread to the others
- 03Rules about what can talk to what, written down in plain language rather than living in somebody's head
- 04Wired backbone and switching sized for what you have and what you will add in the next few years
- 05Power over the network cable for cameras, access points and door equipment, which means fewer plugs and one place to reboot things from
- 06Naming and labeling so that in two years anybody can tell what is plugged into what
- 07Documentation handed to you at the end, including passwords, in a form you own and can give to somebody else
A network somebody deliberately designed, that you understand, that has room to grow, and where one bad device cannot take down everything else.
Questions
Questions people actually ask
Is this overkill for a house?
It would have been ten years ago. A typical home now has thirty or more connected devices, most of which nobody updates. Separating them is the single highest-value hour of a home network installation.
Can you do the design and the coverage work at the same time?
That is the cheapest way to buy both, because the cabling, the switching and the configuration all happen on one visit instead of two. We work across Washington DC, Northern Virginia and Suburban Maryland, and the survey that decides where the access points go is at WiFi & Coverage.
Will my smart devices still work if you split things up?
Yes. Making phones and speakers still find devices across separated lanes is fiddly to configure, which is why it often gets skipped, but it works properly when it is done right.
Do I need to replace everything?
Usually not all of it. We will tell you what is worth keeping and what is holding you back. Replacing one bad switch often matters more than replacing everything else.
Also under secure and always on
Get a free estimate
We come out, look at the place, and give you a real number in writing.
Equipment we work with: Typically built on Ubiquiti UniFi or TP-Link Omada, using VLAN segmentation and firewall policy between zones.