Networking Question. Unmanaged switches in the home enviroment.

[at05gt]

Long story short, I wanna get my tower and server off WiFi. So I convinced my parents (haha yes I still live at home, don't judge me, I don't have to pay rent ) to let me move the cable modem and router into my room (center of the house mind you), so that I can wire directly into the back of the router.

A thought came across my mind though, both the tower and server (just recently upgraded both, tower a few months ago and server this week) have gig Ethernet ports, and the router is only fast. So I'm looking into purchasing a small unmanaged 5-8 port gig switch for around 30-40 dollars. I've seen a few options, Netgear, Dlink, Linksys, Trendnet (garbage btw), and Asus all have similar offerings. My plan is to uplink the switch to the router and plug my devices into the switch.

Just wondering if anybody has had any experience with small unmanaged switches and which brand would be the best for my price range. (in before netgear prosafe - too expensive)

[Deleted]

Wouldn't plugging a gig switch after the fast ethernet router bottleneck the connection ?

[blackblade]

Gig ethernet is probably not going to affect performance going online unless you have more than 100 mbit download speed. It's great for local stuff, like moving files between your machine.

Assuming you're doing a lot of moving of stuff internally (like if you're streaming media from that server to another machine) Then moving to a switch is ideal (Especially if your ISP provides a modem-router, and you don't get the option to change it.)

I'm personally an asus fanboi, and most of their gigabit switches in that price range have solid reviews.

I'd probably go for one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833320047

[at05gt]

Would only bottleneck outside the switch connections, since both PC's will be plugged into the same switch the connection is basically direct and bypasses the router. Think 2 PCs with a crossover cable and its about the same deal.

Gig ethernet is probably not going to affect performance going online unless you have more than 100 mbit download speed. It's great for local stuff, like moving files between your machine.

Assuming you're doing a lot of moving of stuff internally (like if you're streaming media from that server to another machine) Then moving to a switch is ideal (Especially if your ISP provides a modem-router, and you don't get the option to change it.)

I'm personally an asus fanboi, and most of their gigabit switches in that price range have solid reviews.

I'd probably go for one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833320047

Ya I stream to my Tower from the Server, and that is the exact switch I was looking at as well. :P

My setup is Comcast Cable 25 Mbit, bog standard motorola surfboard cable modem, Linksys N300 (E1200) WiFi Router, then 3 PC's (mom's, Tower, Server) 2 Laptop's on the WiFi (mom's and mine) and 2 Android phones on the WiFi.

[Cyanotical]

you are hooking it up the best way, you will have Gbe on your local LAN and whatever speed your connection is on your internet, and you will be offloading switching from your router to a proper switch

personally, i would look at a cisco home switch (linksys), but they are more in the $70 range

otherwise, go with the asus,

netgear/d-link only offer their cheapest crap in that price range, and trendnet switches all die after 3 months

edit, atm im using this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833124418

it's got decent throughput for a home switch, but i will be replacing it with a Catalyst sometime in the future

[at05gt]

you are hooking it up the best way, you will have Gbe on your local LAN and whatever speed your connection is on your internet, and you will be offloading switching from your router to a proper switch

personally, i would look at a cisco home switch (linksys), but they are more in the $70 range

otherwise, go with the asus,

netgear/d-link only offer their cheapest crap in that price range, and trendnet switches all die after 3 months

Ya I know how to hook it up , I'm going to school for IT (close to my first degree, 6 months, then I start my bachelor's) and do the same for a living.
We have mostly Netgear Prosafe's at work and I love them but damn that would be expensive for a home implementation. Our big backbone switches are Linksys Small Business.

Ya I've heard nothing but bad about Trendnet and the low end Netgear's.

[Deleted]

i have the same basic setup (100mbit router -> gbit switch -> 2 pcs) running for some years now, using the cheapest switch i could get and i dont have any problems with it. the switch is a d-link dgs-1005d wich costs about 22€ here in germany, so about the cheapest you can get. there is not much difference in those cheap switches anyway, they all use the same hardware. the performance is quite good, getting >900mbit effective transfer rates.

I:\Downloads>iperf.exe -w 128K -t 30 -c 192.168.178.20
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.178.20, TCP port 5001
TCP window size:  128 KByte
------------------------------------------------------------
[156] local 192.168.178.30 port 5927 connected with 192.168.178.20 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[156]  0.0-30.0 sec  3.18 GBytes   909 Mbits/sec

in your situation i would just buy anything cheap that is available from your store of choice.

[n0cturnal]

I've been running with a Zyxel gs-105b for more than 2 years now, no problems at all and the transfers I do are around 100MB/s, not bad for a 25€ fanless switch.

[at05gt]

i have the same basic setup (100mbit router -> gbit switch -> 2 pcs) running for some years now, using the cheapest switch i could get and i dont have any problems with it. the switch is a d-link dgs-1005d wich costs about 22€ here in germany, so about the cheapest you can get. there is not much difference in those cheap switches anyway, they all use the same hardware. the performance is quite good, getting >900mbit effective transfer rates.

I:\Downloads>iperf.exe -w 128K -t 30 -c 192.168.178.20
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.178.20, TCP port 5001
TCP window size:  128 KByte
------------------------------------------------------------
[156] local 192.168.178.30 port 5927 connected with 192.168.178.20 port 5001
[ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth
[156]  0.0-30.0 sec  3.18 GBytes   909 Mbits/sec

in your situation i would just buy anything cheap that is available from your store of choice.

Went with the Asus GX-D1051 was $31 something after tax. I wanted to get an 8 port but I got to thinking about it and I have 1 uplink and 2 devices do I really need 8 ports?



Not bad for a 30 dollar switch, I tried multi file copies from server to tower with windows 7 and its just ridiculous now, my network speed meter pegs 950+ mb/s. My RDP connections are silky smooth as well.



Those lights are gonna kill me at night.