Ever since the Internet became an important part of our daily lives, I’ve lived in a place where service options were limited and generally not so fast. So when I saw trucks outside my neighborhood laying fiber optic cable, I got really excited. I don’t don’t when we’ll get faster speeds, but I know it is probably now measured in months instead of years. Today I’ll tell you about a way to improve my network so the faster speeds can be fully utilized. That includes a link To Amazon that will earn me a small commission if you buy something. No, I didn’t get any free products.

Once the fiber optic cable gets to the neighborhood, we already have fiber optic coming to our homes. I’ve heard it may not be in great condition, but there should be a way to run new cable via the area below this panel near my house.

Right now it is impossible to know what speeds will be offered other than it has to be a lot faster than what I have now. That means I need to make sure everything within the house can handle faster speeds. One way to split a signal into multiple ports. I’ve selected the TP-Link 8 Port Gigabit Ethernet Network Switch as it has 8 ports of output at gigabit speeds. No matter what speed we get, it will likely be slower than gigabit. Even if we get a full gigabit, that is far faster than I can use right now.

A little over a year ago I bought this exact switch and it has worked great for me. Now I’m considering a couple more of them to expand Internet capabilities in a couple of other locations within my house.