Almost every fault traces back here
Touchscreens that take a moment to respond, music that drops in one room, cameras that stall, an app that will not connect from the car: these are usually reported as automation faults. Nearly always they are home Wi-Fi and networking faults.
It is worth being blunt about the reason. A large house is a hostile radio environment, and consumer equipment designed for an apartment is being asked to cover three levels of concrete, stone, foil-backed insulation and glass.
Coverage is decided on plan, not by adding boxes
Access point positions come from the floor plan and the construction materials, not from where a power point happens to be. Concrete slabs and stone walls attenuate heavily, so ceiling-mounted access points on a cabled backbone, one per zone, beat any number of mesh nodes daisy-chained through the house.
Outdoor areas need the same treatment. Terraces, pools and garages are where coverage is expected and most often absent.
The parts nobody sees
Managed switching, so audio, video, cameras and control traffic can be separated and prioritised. Adequate cabling, terminated and tested rather than assumed. A sensible address plan. Guest and device separation, so a visitor's laptop is not on the same segment as the cameras.
Power protection and ventilation matter too. Network hardware that runs hot in a sealed cupboard fails, and it usually fails at the least convenient moment.
Design decisions and tradeoffs
Wired beats wireless every time it is available, so we cable televisions, touchscreens, controllers and cameras and reserve wireless for devices that move. It costs more in cable and less in support calls.
Redundancy is a judgement call: a second internet path is worthwhile in a home where people work or where security must stay online, and unnecessary in most others. We would rather spend the budget on coverage and switching than on features nobody uses.
Get it right first
In any project, the network is the first thing we design and the last thing we compromise. Our home Wi-Fi and networking page covers the specification in more detail, and both the Mosman and Northern Beaches case studies show what changes once the layer underneath is correct.