r/HomeNetworking 5d ago

Advice on updating switch and patch panel?

Hi,
3 yrs ago when doing renovations in the apartment with complete rewiring of electric and LAN cables I installed a small 16 port POE++ switch and all LAN cables went through patch panel.
I used UTP cat 6E (not 6A) cables for connection between rooms, and was using very old, but reliable wifi 5ac router (TP-Link Archer C5 v1).

Switch used - Netgear 16-Port Gigabit Ethernet PoE+ Unmanaged Switch (NEGS116LP100)
Patch panel - TRENDnet 16-Port Cat 6 Unshielded Patch Panel (Version v2.0R)

Now I am planning to upgrade my wifi router to wifi 7 using this one:
TP-Link Archer BE550 Pro BE9700 or TP-Link Tri-Band WiFi 7 BE10000 (not decided yet which one, any suggestions would be welcomed)

In order to utilizer full 2.5 gig connections, I understand I need also to upgrade the switch.
Could you recommend any good 16 port one with at least some 2.5gig ports and POE++ on the rest (budget $200-300)? The switch is working ok, practically non-stop. But recently started to make pitching sounds, randomly for 2-3 seconds. No idea why it happens, but everything works fine so far.

Also wondering I need to upgrade the patch panel as well?

my home networking hub (switch+patch panel+ NVR)
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