A non-traditional home network setup using pegboard
I thought I’d share this since it’s different from the traditional rack setups I usually see here. I originally got the idea after seeing someone else mount their network equipment on pegboard. I have an unfinished basement with an insulation blanket on the walls, so mounting a rack or large board flat against the wall was more complicated than I wanted it to be. I ended up hanging the pegboard from the floor joists instead.
The current setup has an Omada router and 2.5 Gb PoE switch, with two EAP773 access points upstairs. The mini PC runs Proxmox with Home Assistant, Pi-hole, and the Omada controller. The rest is mostly related to smart home devices: Zigbee, Z-Wave and Thread hardware, a Reolink Home Hub for the cameras, etc. The small screen on the lower left is a touchscreen Home Assistant dashboard running on a Pi 5 that gives me a quick view of any issues. Everything on the board is connected through the UPS on the left to handle short power interruptions.
The Ethernet cables running to the patch panels are a combination of devices mounted to the board and longer runs that connect elsewhere in the house. I have five outdoor PoE cameras with runs that go up to the attic, along with multiple keystone jacks in my office.
A rack would definitely be the more traditional way to do this, but the pegboard has worked really well for my space. Everything stays visible and accessible, and it has been easy to move things around as the setup has changed.
Since this is in my unfinished basement, which I also use as a workshop, I added a heavy-duty sheet of clear plastic that drops over the board when I’m doing anything dusty. It normally stays rolled up above it for airflow.
I think I’m finally done changing it for a while.