Help understanding networking and routers

[Nightowl805]

This I am sure is very basic so I apologize up front. I am building my first Freenas box for basic backup and mostly plex. I currently have Time Warner Cable. Before Freenas I have the time warner cable box with wifi turned off connected to an Asus RT AC 66R. I have 4 ports out of the time warner modem with just the Asus plugged into it. I have four out ports on the Asus currently I have a printer and sonos for that. My server motherboard supermicro x10sra has two Intel gb lan's. My house is two stories with the routers and server upstairs in the extra bedroom. I will be serving 4 Roku's for plex in house and maybe two Roku's outside the house, one in WA and one is AZ.

So first question. Do I plug the server from to the time warner cable modem or the Asus. Do I need another Intel nic card and should I make it a 2 port Intel gb or 10gb nic card. I vaguely understand link aggregation but not sure if that can actually help me if I am serving everything wirelessly. Also, do I need a switch? Managed or un managed, don't know the difference and is a gb switch or do I need to be thinking about a 10 gb switch.

And lastly, my internet speed is 100mb download. When I cut the cable lol, should I upgrade to the 300mb download/100mb upload. This will help my serving the outside Roku's but will do nothing for my wireless speeds?

Thank you, lots of questions.

 

[pirateghost]

You plug your server in to whatever switch/router has GB. You shouldn't even think about changing NICs, as you have zero reason to. Lagg is not something you could even do with your current setup. You would need a managed switch for that. Honestly, just plug the freenas into your current network and see what results you get. 10gb is outside of your needs completely.

 

[anodos]

Lagg starts making sense when you have 10+ concurrent users hitting the server hard. If you don't know the difference between a managed switch and an unmanged one, save some money and go with the unmanaged one. :D