questions about switches

[dumbfound]

Questions about switches..

-So my main objective is to buy a big switch ideally 16-24 port in my basement and then can I add another switch on the other end of the switch to branch out to even more ports or there is a limitation? IE: One Cat5e from base to 1 room attached to a switch so I have more ports.
I read somewhere that a netgear if I wanted 2 extra ports on the other end of switch i would need to give up 2 slots on the main switch. please confirm thank you.

-Also I am looking for a switch not very expensive I just want to stream data and HD media to several computers at the same time from server or each computer with ease so I guess a gigabit switch but anything really good I plan to throw in a network server too.
-any good? http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=324 basically saw that around this forums just curious for my situation.

-Does switch affect latency on video games?

-Also an unmanage switch wont effect Internet speed correct since my router will have QoS.


Sorry for the newbie questions this is my first attempt to network house just want to confirm before i start. =]
thank you.

 

[jdabbs]

Adding a switch shouldn't present any problems. Not sure what port penalty you're referring to. You don't need to have five ports free on Switch A if you need five open on the connected Switch B. You do lose two ports used to connect A and B, one on each side. If you plan to run multiple lines to a room, you will need a corresponding port for each line.

Latency would only be impacted in a few scenarios:

1) Link saturation--Switch A is connected to Switch B, which has the link to the Internet.Computer 1 on Switch A is transferring files to Computer 2 on Switch B, which has maxed out the link between Switches A and B. Other computers on Switch A only would have latency issues.

2) Computers on a switch are transferring enough data to overwhelm it, which may be around 2500-2700 Mbps for consumer switches.

Managed/Unmanaged doesn't matter.

 

[gmhumphr]

I'll poke into this thread since it deals with some questions I have about home networking.

I'm planning a whole house ethernet installation and am wondering about router and switch communication. It seems that all consumer grade routers have only 4 ports but I can expect as many as 24 ports to network the entire house, do I just run one port from the router to a bigger switch and attach everything there (so the router is simply there as a firewall/NAT) or do I want to use some of the ports in the router? Primary uses are internet of course and streaming media from NAS and saving directly on NAS from HTPC. I would imagine I would like to keep them all on one switch to have the fastest transfer.

The question about switch "daisy chaining" has been plaguing me for a while, in general are there limitations to the number of switches you can hook up to each other? Or is it just a matter of saturating the lines to the "core" switch?

 

[thiggins]

For switches, you just need to watch the bandwidth requirements between switches so that you don't saturate the single link between switches. Managed / smart switches that support port aggregation can give you more switch-to-switch bandwidth if you need it.

 

[gmhumphr]

I notice that the majority of routers out there 10/100 ethernet, how should that interact with a gigabit network? If I keep all my gigabit devices on a gigabit switch which is then uplinked to a fast ethernet router, would the be any problem? I understand that dsl/cable is much slower than 100mbs ethernet, so the connection is already being slowed down to be sent over the internet. As long as all the gigabit traffic is on the gigabit router I shouldn't have any trouble having that pair up to the fast ethernet router or should I go for a gigabit router (of which I have only seen with wireless built in and 4 ports)? How would this work in a world of jumbo frames?

 

[thiggins]

If your gigabit clients are attached to a Gigabit switch, there is no benefit in having a Gigabit switch in your router unless your Internet speed is 90 Mbps or higher.

Need To Know: Jumbo Frames in Small Networks