Multiple Switches

[Colt45 UK]

I'm getting tired of poor wifi signal and often connection drop out around my home - even tho I have HomePlug installed but it doesn't give me the speed I expected, so I've decided to hardwire all over my house (4 beds house).

My question is ...

Can I have multiple switches (looking maybe 4 managed switch or should I get unmanaged switch?)
Does it affect the speed from switch to switch?

My current idea are (you're welcome to suggest me of alternative)

From main room, i have ISP SuperHub (which I can set to router mode) connect to 1 port onto 8 Ports Managed Switch.
Link 1 cat5e/cat6 from 8 Ports Switch (Main Room) to 5 Ports (Office Room).
Link 1 cat5e/cat6 from 8 Ports Switch (Main Room) to 5 Ports (Game Room).
Link 1 cat5e/cat6 from 5 Ports Switch (Game Room) to 5 Ports (Kid's Bedroom).
(Or connect from Office to the Kid's Bedroom using external cable)

Main Room have Smart TV, Xbox One S, Xbox 360, Nvidia Shield TV, Humax DVR.
Office Room have 2 PCs, Laser Printer.
Game Room have 2 x Xbox360, Xbox One, Playstation 4.
Kid Bedroom have 2 x Laptop, SmartTV.

I do however have 4 x Nest Protect and 1 x Nest Thermostat (wireless only) around the home - being 1 of the Nest Protect do often disconnect for poor wifi signal. - 8 tablets, 6 mobiles.

Also, if I move R8000 from the Main room to the middle of house and link directly to Main Room Switch to keep the wifi working for all tablets/mobiles.

Will that do? - My walls are 1930's and they're solid breeze blocks around the home so I get lots of wifi weakspot. HomePlug (currently have or had netgear AV500, PLP1200, tplink av500, etc.. and they're all giving me like 10-15mbps and just drops out pretty much 20-30 times a day - maybe incompatible devices as I'm not sure if mixing different brands is good idea) - So getting sick of wifi, but want full hardwire

My english isn't good as it's not my first language

Thanks and hope you can help.

 

[CaptainSTX]

I'm getting tired of poor wifi signal and often connection drop out around my home - even tho I have HomePlug installed but it doesn't give me the speed I expected, so I've decided to hardwire all over my house (4 beds house).

My question is ...

Can I have multiple switches (looking maybe 4 managed switch or should I get unmanaged switch?)
Does it affect the speed from switch to switch?

My current idea are (you're welcome to suggest me of alternative)

From main room, i have ISP SuperHub (which I can set to router mode) connect to 1 port onto 8 Ports Managed Switch.
Link 1 cat5e/cat6 from 8 Ports Switch (Main Room) to 5 Ports (Office Room).
Link 1 cat5e/cat6 from 8 Ports Switch (Main Room) to 5 Ports (Game Room).
Link 1 cat5e/cat6 from 5 Ports Switch (Game Room) to 5 Ports (Kid's Bedroom).
(Or connect from Office to the Kid's Bedroom using external cable)

Main Room have Smart TV, Xbox One S, Xbox 360, Nvidia Shield TV, Humax DVR.
Office Room have 2 PCs, Laser Printer.
Game Room have 2 x Xbox360, Xbox One, Playstation 4.
Kid Bedroom have 2 x Laptop, SmartTV.

I do however have 4 x Nest Protect and 1 x Nest Thermostat (wireless only) around the home - being 1 of the Nest Protect do often disconnect for poor wifi signal. - 8 tablets, 6 mobiles.

Also, if I move R8000 from the Main room to the middle of house and link directly to Main Room Switch to keep the wifi working for all tablets/mobiles.

Will that do? - My walls are 1930's and they're solid breeze blocks around the home so I get lots of wifi weakspot. HomePlug (currently have or had netgear AV500, PLP1200, tplink av500, etc.. and they're all giving me like 10-15mbps and just drops out pretty much 20-30 times a day - maybe incompatible devices as I'm not sure if mixing different brands is good idea) - So getting sick of wifi, but want full hardwire

My english isn't good as it's not my first language

Thanks and hope you can help.

Your plan is good. No reason to install managed switches unless you need VLANs or some other feature that less expensive plug and play and unmanages switches. Multiple cables are nice but unless you will fully staturate a one gigabyte link a single Cat6 cable will be good enough. Run a spare cable if you want particularly if there is one or more locations that will be extremly difficult to rewire if a cable gets damaged.

If you want to improve WiFi all over consider buying medium priced AC Wifi routers instead of four or five port switches and use the Ethernet ports as switch ports and the WiFi.

 

[coxhaus]

I run a Cisco SG200-8 8port switch where my TV is located. I did not want to run that many wires. I have 6 connections where my TV is located. My network terminates(cable modem) into my computer closet across the house where I have a Cisco SG300-28 switch.

 

[Colt45 UK]

Your plan is good. No reason to install managed switches unless you need VLANs or some other feature that less expensive plug and play and unmanages switches. Multiple cables are nice but unless you will fully staturate a one gigabyte link a single Cat6 cable will be good enough. Run a spare cable if you want particularly if there is one or more locations that will be extremly difficult to rewire if a cable gets damaged.

If you want to improve WiFi all over consider buying medium priced AC Wifi routers instead of four or five port switches and use the Ethernet ports as switch ports and the WiFi.

Sound good, yea - i don't need the full gigabit so 1 cable is fine for now - I could always put 2 cable to make it 2gbits? - i.e. 2 cables tie together from Main Room to Office Room? - Then in future, if I ever need more cable, I could just run from Office Room to other rooms - save me from hassle by drilling holes again? - Dual RJ45 socket (faceplace) on wall rather than Single?

I guess I can go ahead and start ordering stuff now

Thanks

 

[Colt45 UK]

I run a Cisco SG200-8 8port switch where my TV is located. I did not want to run that many wires. I have 6 connections where my TV is located. My network terminates(cable modem) into my computer closet across the house where I have a Cisco SG300-28 switch.

Don't think I need that many ports in 1 room, I'll end up tons of cables in 1 room
I'm more than happy to ring them up around the house. i.e. Room1 > Room2 > Room3 > Room4 then finally back into Room1 .. then 5 ports in each room (except Room 1 will have 8 ports cos that's where I have the most device at)

 

[coxhaus]

My TV room the living in the front of the house needs Ethernet connections for the following: AppleTV, TV, BlueRay, laptop, wireless AP, and one extra for testing. As I need more bandwidth I will add more backhaul wires.

 

[CaptainSTX]

I run two unmanaged 8 Port TP-Link gigabyte switches, a T-Mobil ASUS router being used as an AP using all five Ethernet ports, plus two old repurposed Linksys 54Gs with the radios and DHCP off as switches where I needed additional Ethernet ports and where Fast Ethernet is more than enough bandwidth.

 

[aaronwt]

I'm getting tired of poor wifi signal and often connection drop out around my home - even tho I have HomePlug installed but it doesn't give me the speed I expected, so I've decided to hardwire all over my house (4 beds house).

My question is ...

Can I have multiple switches (looking maybe 4 managed switch or should I get unmanaged switch?)
Does it affect the speed from switch to switch?

My current idea are (you're welcome to suggest me of alternative)

From main room, i have ISP SuperHub (which I can set to router mode) connect to 1 port onto 8 Ports Managed Switch.
Link 1 cat5e/cat6 from 8 Ports Switch (Main Room) to 5 Ports (Office Room).
Link 1 cat5e/cat6 from 8 Ports Switch (Main Room) to 5 Ports (Game Room).
Link 1 cat5e/cat6 from 5 Ports Switch (Game Room) to 5 Ports (Kid's Bedroom).
(Or connect from Office to the Kid's Bedroom using external cable)

Main Room have Smart TV, Xbox One S, Xbox 360, Nvidia Shield TV, Humax DVR.
Office Room have 2 PCs, Laser Printer.
Game Room have 2 x Xbox360, Xbox One, Playstation 4.
Kid Bedroom have 2 x Laptop, SmartTV.

I do however have 4 x Nest Protect and 1 x Nest Thermostat (wireless only) around the home - being 1 of the Nest Protect do often disconnect for poor wifi signal. - 8 tablets, 6 mobiles.

Also, if I move R8000 from the Main room to the middle of house and link directly to Main Room Switch to keep the wifi working for all tablets/mobiles.

Will that do? - My walls are 1930's and they're solid breeze blocks around the home so I get lots of wifi weakspot. HomePlug (currently have or had netgear AV500, PLP1200, tplink av500, etc.. and they're all giving me like 10-15mbps and just drops out pretty much 20-30 times a day - maybe incompatible devices as I'm not sure if mixing different brands is good idea) - So getting sick of wifi, but want full hardwire

My english isn't good as it's not my first language

Thanks and hope you can help.

I've been using around twenty, unmanaged GigE switches for many years on my home network,. It has never made any difference in speed whether the device goes through one switch or six. I still get low latency and 940Mb/s throughput.

Although since I have unmanaged switches and I have over one hundred devices on my network, I have it physically separated into four sections. That way most data stays on that part of the network unless it needs to go through the internet or connect to a device on another part of the network. Without separating it I would have issues and would need to buy managed switches. Which would have been a big expense since I have so many five and eight port switches that would need to be replaced.

 

[coxhaus]

Anytime you load one of your small switches with more than a GIG you will notice a different.

A layer 3 switch would be a great way to switch between segments at GIG speeds per port.

 

[sfx2000]

Most unmanaged switches these days will be unblocking across the ports - so if one has 8 ports, one can safely move 1gb across any port to any other port - multiple sessions included.

just keep in mind that the uplink to the upstream switch is the bottleneck - 1GBe full duplex...

a lightly managed L2 switch is pretty cheap, and even L3Lite switches are very affordable...

 

[coxhaus]

just keep in mind that the uplink to the upstream switch is the bottleneck - 1GBe full duplex...

..

This is why you use switch structure to get around that limitation. Best to setup a core switch with switches running off the core with different ports feeding different switches. Do not daisy chain switches for the reason above. The layer 3 switches make great cores because they can switch traffic at port speeds.

 

[matthelm]

This is why you use switch structure to get around that limitation. Best to setup a core switch with switches running off the core with different ports feeding different switches. Do not daisy chain switches for the reason above. The layer 3 switches make great cores because they can switch traffic at port speeds.

Sounds like you are volunteering to go to people's house and help run all those extra wires ... for free!!! ;-)

 

[coxhaus]

Whether you run the switches structured or daisy chained it is the same number of wires.

 

[sfx2000]

I've been using around twenty, unmanaged GigE switches for many years on my home network,. It has never made any difference in speed whether the device goes through one switch or six. I still get low latency and 940Mb/s throughput.

Makes sense - I pulled up some specs for cheap unmanaged 8-port GBe switches... lot of capability for not much money...

They all have 16GB/Sec across the ports, 8,000 MAC table entries, Auto-MDI-X (so no worries about straight thru vs. crossover cables) and auto-uplink. And these days, most of these lower end Layer 2 switches also support QoS pass-thru (I haven't found one on the shelf that doesn't)

All that for basically 50 bucks - TP-Link, Netgear, Linksys, D-Link, etc - they're all pretty much the same, and as a commodity, they're priced all about the same.

There are some applications where having a lightly/fully managed Layer 3 switch, but for many, and unmanaged switch is more than good enough.

 

[coxhaus]

The problem with a lot of small switches connected is your connection limits your link speed to the GIG wire connecting the switches together. Here is an example. You have servers on switch A each server puts out a GIG of data. You have 2 clients on switch B. Each client is requesting a GIG of data from one of the servers on switch A. With 2 small switches each client gets 1/2 of what they are requesting because they are being limited by the wire connection between the switches. If you have one large switch instead of 2 small ones the client will be supplied the full amount of data requested because the back plane can handle it and you are not being limited by the wire between switches. So using larger switches is better than using smaller switches.

You can use lag ports to improve the total bandwidth between smaller switches but with smaller switches you tend to run out of ports. With LAG you have just moved up a step on the ladder because you have the same scenario with the clients requesting data at a higher level with the same problems.

The only thing a layer 3 switch does is to allow you to switch data very fast between networks much faster than a router. Networks can get very large and they slow down. So you divide the networks to improve the speed. This can be done with VLANs or separate switches.

Switch structure can be done without a layer 3 switch. You just setup a core and fan out. The layer 3 switch just makes it run way better. And switches are faster than routers.

PS
Say you are doing a backup across a lot of little switches then the performance for all clients is being limited and affected due to the wire connecting the switches limiting the bandwidth.

 

[ulaganath]

If done already never mind but get a 4 port poe switch and low cost 300 Mbps access point each may 60-90 dollar max will give you wireless in each room

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[sfx2000]

The problem with a lot of small switches connected is your connection limits your link speed to the GIG wire connecting the switches together. Here is an example. You have servers on switch A each server puts out a GIG of data. You have 2 clients on switch B. Each client is requesting a GIG of data from one of the servers on switch A. With 2 small switches each client gets 1/2 of what they are requesting because they are being limited by the wire connection between the switches. If you have one large switch instead of 2 small ones the client will be supplied the full amount of data requested because the back plane can handle it and you are not being limited by the wire between switches. So using larger switches is better than using smaller switches.

Depends on traffic patterns - backhaul switches - even cheap ones, don't have the client load to consider...

One can have 7 clients on a single unmanaged switch - it's unlikely that they'll all be saturating the BW on that switch, and traffic is bursty from the client anyways... That uplink port is full-duplex, so it's more like 2Gbps for the downstream clients.... in most home networks, it's really a challenge to saturate a small switch to be honest... one would have to pull 1Gbe connections on all ports concurrently to see a problem, and in most cases, that doesn't happen.

But to your point - one has to consider traffic across the LAN...

Splitting out the LAN with even unmanaged switches - it's akin to collector lanes on the freeway - in most cases, it's a good thing. Just remember that each downstream switch is going to add a bit of latency, and depending on traffic, but for home usage, this really isn't an issue.

With managed switches - even on the low end with L2 only smartswitches, one can do a bit of segregation of traffic based on broadcast domains - and Layer 3/Layer 3-lite can do more - there's not enough traffic sometimes to justify that...

Some folks might need L3-Lite, and there are products that support this...

All the same though... don't introduce complexity (and cost) when one doesn't need to...

 

[CaptainSTX]

How many homes does everyone think have multiple clients that can even pull a gig of data using an Ethernet port? First it is hard now a days to find a laptop now that has an Ethernet port much less a gigabyte port. Some people still purchase desktops which have gigabyte Ethernet ports but how many homes have one desk top PC and probably even fewer homes have multiple desk top PCs. Even if a PC has a a gigabyte port is its processor and HD capable of handling more than 500 Mbps. With wired hardware in your home when do you even come close to saturating a gigabyte link other than having multiple backups running. Streaming ripped DVDs uses what 20 - 40 Mbps streams.

I realize that there are people that run heavy graphics programs, PhotoShop CAD CAM, etc programs at home and utilize a NAS/server but how many?

Worrying about maxing out the capacity of a small unmanaged switch in a typical home seems about as practical as worrying about how man angels can dance on the head of a pin.

 

[sfx2000]

I realize that there are people that run heavy graphics programs, PhotoShop CAD CAM, etc programs at home and utilize a NAS/server but how many?

Valid use case... those who use these apps know this, and they generally won't ask the forum here...

 

[ulaganath]

Not really you don't need multiple desktop or Laptop for saturation. Just 1 nas will do. If you have 1gb internet will do both is enough for 2 devices.

I do saturate my desk pc gig port easily with 1 nas give me 988mbps.

Its depends on the user and his requirement.

I have seen even thunderbolt capable drives exceeding lan Gigabit speed upto 5x time

So Gigabit is good speed but the files are growing even 10gb will be normal soon when consumed in mass

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