Don’t do the unknown brands on Amazon, the alphabet soup names. Much of the offshore stuff isn’t manufactured with quality control and a failed wire buried in the wall would not be fun at all.
Like u/Born-Basis7489 says, big box store stuff is usually reliable. Online - Monoprice, TrueCable are a couple of good ones. The big names like Belden are fine too of course.
A wired coupler like this would be better than an RJ-45 coupler. I would put it in a small secondary electrical junction box as well, for weather sealing.
Thoughts:
You get what you pay for. Cheap does not mean good and good usually doesn’t come cheap. I like Tripp Lite Isobar surge strips - better built and more durable than cheap surge strips. You would not believe what constitutes surge protection in the plain strips. In a corporate environment I opened up a lot of the office power strips, most all of them had blown MOVs, and most did not tell you it was no longer protecting. A lot of the cheap rack PDU/surge strips have nothing more than cheap consumer protection.
Like u/badgerAteMyHomework says, a UPS protects. Often times power drops involve multiple ups and downs as automatic breakers attempt to clear the line and electronics do not like the pulsations. A good UPS picks up on the first blip and keeps things on battery until stable power returns. I use CyberPower for my network, many of the APC devices are good also. If you use a good UPS, you do not need the surge strip, the UPS will do it.
If you get a PDU, make it without surge protection if you get a UPS. Also, to me the panel mount, front outlet PDUs are useless. The ones that have a main switch on the front and outlets on the back are fine, and ones that mount at the back of the rack are also fine. (I model what I have after working with enterprise/lab level racks over the years.
BTW, if you want quality non-surge power strips, the Tripp Lite Waber strips like this are great. High quality, protected switch, and a breaker.
The luxury of being able to ignore cable management.
Unifi, or if budget is a concern, TP-Link. Either will handle your minimal load. You’ll need to factor in the controller, whether their hardware or run on your own in something. If you go the UniFi route, you could look into their line of cameras (very good, IMHO) and perhaps run the Cloud Key Gen2+ which would be the controller and NVR.
Unshielded is fine for this use. Incidental passing electrical lines is not a problem.
That will work, I had basically the exact same thing. The cables came from the rooms, went through a 66 block and then into a patch panel. It worked fine for me, gigabit speeds and all. So yep, if your stuff is wired to either the A or B standard, you can do this. Make sure those room outlets are in fact wired for ethernet. I had at least one that was only for phone, so I had to reterminate it. An ethernet tester would be a useful tool to have, I would avoid the cheap $10 ones and look for the Klein LAN Scout Jr. - I think it’s worth the extra cost.
Mine just kept bugging me, because before I moved here it was a hybrid of phones and ethernet. Plus remodels had ditched some of the original lines, so I pulled it apart and ran the room cables right into a new 12-port patch panel and eliminated the 66-block. I just wanted to tidy things up.
For those kind of prices and your description of your apartment, check out the Ubiquiti UniFi Dream Router. You’d get plenty of control options and a well-performing router and AP. (they go in and out of stock, keep an eye on the store - 2 year warranty direct through UI)
Ubiquiti UniFi or TP-Link Omada - both prosumer, a step up from consumer stuff and especially mesh. Both are centrally managed, multiple APs and switches are a breeze. If you’re setting up VLANs later you will appreciate the control. Seriously, if you’re wiring, no need for mesh stuff.
If you want “solid Wi-Fi performance”, go with a prosumer setup such as Ubiquiti UniFi or TP-Link Omada. You would wire APs as needed to provide coverage in the house. Anything less - including mesh, and wiring mesh, is going to be less than what you stated you want. The only advantage to wiring mesh (which makes it not mesh) is the management of the network (and both UniFi and Omada are centrally managed when you have the requisite controller. To me, it’s pointless to be spending money on a system that where you’re going to disable the whole reason it’s marketed - the mesh (which is wirelessly uplinking). Cabling access points and wiring as many of your devices as possible is where the best performance and reliability comes from.
Wifi 6 only helps with client devices that are wifi 6 compatible (or for mesh wireless backhauling that is also wifi 6 compliant). It does not help any previous (wifi 5, wifi4 etc.) client protocols. However - wifi 6 is becoming ubiquitous and you may not be saving much money by looking for wifi 5 deals. Or, in other words - it doesn’t hurt to have wifi 6 devices.
Each switch should have the upstream port plug into the router. Do not use two cables, it doesn’t work like that.
Yes, each switch has the upstream port connected to your router. Unused ports are not a waste.
IF you have gigabit ethernet ports on everything, there is no real bottleneck. You won’t saturate - i.e. fill the connection - because you don’t run everything at full blast at the same time. Most home devices take VERY little bandwidth. Even your streaming devices are relatively low. If you have something that is higher bandwidth you could put it directly on a router port, but it’s not likely you will notice much.
Thanks for the follow up post with your results! Glad to hear you are up and running.
I agree with u/TheUserNameIs- and it will be fine for a few years until you want to upgrade to wifi 7 anyway.
It’s saying it is searching for a downstream connection. I’d suggest you call your ISP.
Any qualified ethernet cable will work fine, nothing special needed for PoE. Monoprice is a good cable brand, that will do just fine.