Designing a Home/Small Business Network

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
L

lake59

Reputable
Jan 15, 2015
10
0
4,510
I currently have a home/home-office network that has been cobbed together through the years. It works well but has frequent outages, I suspect due to an overburdened router. I also realize that my current configuration does not allow the fastest file transfer between PC's which is an important feature for us. In addition to wired connections, our family connects wirelessly to the network via an assortment of iProducts, tablets and laptops. We would like to allow these wireless connections the fastest connection to LAN resources as well.

I live in a remote area with 10mbps aDSL internet, so security and gigabit router are not important.

Given that, I have come up with a new configuration that I will describe below. Looking for reasonably-priced hardware to build the configuration has been frustrating, reading comments from other buyers that performance is often inconsistent and substandard, something I am trying to get away from!

I would be very appreciative for any feedback on my proposed configuration and recommendations for solid components that are priced reasonably.

Proposed Configuration:

One 10/100/1000 switch connecting 4 pcs (one is a media server) and a 300 mbps wireless access point

One 10/100 switch connecting two low-demand appliances (printer and solar panel monitor)

One 10/100 wired router connecting a roku box and both switches mentioned above to the aDSL modem

Note:
The 10/100 switch is to avoid running an additional Cat-5 cable to the router
Should the roku be connected to the 10/100/1000 switch? Assuming 10/100 is sufficient, i am proposing to connect roku to the 10/100 switch, saving a port on the 10/100/1000 switch for inevitable expansion.

Thanks!
 
Solution
B
What gets very messy when you talk about managed switches is there are so many types. The high end ones called layer 3 switches are technically routers.....BUT the main feature they do not have is the NAT that allows one IP to be translated to multiple. Now there might be a switch that can do this it is not common because a switch is designed to not slow traffic down. When you run nat you must actually change every packet which slows things down a tiny bit. It is enough that the switch can no longer run at full speed on every port so it is not done.

In a home install where you only have a single IP from the ISP you must have a device doing the NAT function and that is generally a router.
Sort by date Sort by votes
B

bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
28,319
2,754
125,640
Assuming you have a roku3 which is the only one I know that has ethernet it is only a 10/100 port anyway so plugging it into a gig switch will provide no benefit.

You will find almost no difference between the low end unmanged switches. There used to be some small difference if you tried to run all the ports at max speed simultaneously but it is very rare to find one that can not run all port 1g up and 1g down. It seems they all pretty much use the same same broadcom chips in the inside to do the work no matter the name on the outside.

Most difference are going to be things like if the case is metal or plastic and if the power supply is internal or external.
 
Upvote 1 Downvote
L

lake59

Reputable
Jan 15, 2015
10
0
4,510
Thanks bill001g

Yes, it is a roku3. Good to know it is only 10/100.

To your other point, I have a couple of 10/100 switches now. One is a netgear switch and one is a no-name brand. The latter seems to get bogged down from time-to-time, causing some ports to reduce speed, switching ports seems to resolve the problem! Do you think with the 10/100/1000 switch I will not see these weird reductions in speed?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
B

bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
28,319
2,754
125,640
The low end consumer switches have advanced a lot say in the last 5 years. What has been called non-blocking or wire speed has been on commercial switches for a very long time but this is now almost standard on even the lowest cost consumer switches.

The older devices used small cpu type of processors to transfer data between the ports. This is now done with custom switching asic chips. Now that these asic chips are easily available and tend to also be the cheapest way to build a switch you find them in all the equipment. This is especially true for stupid unmanaged switches that need no additional features not provided by these chips. So it is unlikely you will even find a small unmanaged switch that uses the old processor switching methods....not saying there aren't any but when it cheaper to use the asic solution that is what non name manufacture will do.

Pretty much a switch and especially a gig switch will not slow you down. When you have a 4 port switch where every port and send 1g and receive 1g for a total of 8g throughput this would mean you would some how need to connect stuff that could exceed this which is impossible.

 
Upvote 1 Downvote
L

lake59

Reputable
Jan 15, 2015
10
0
4,510
I have been playing with this configuration and reading about hardware. It appears, though I am not sure that I can use a managed switch without needing a router between the switch and aDSL modem. Is this true? If so, is it advisable to do so?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
B

bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
28,319
2,754
125,640
What gets very messy when you talk about managed switches is there are so many types. The high end ones called layer 3 switches are technically routers.....BUT the main feature they do not have is the NAT that allows one IP to be translated to multiple. Now there might be a switch that can do this it is not common because a switch is designed to not slow traffic down. When you run nat you must actually change every packet which slows things down a tiny bit. It is enough that the switch can no longer run at full speed on every port so it is not done.

In a home install where you only have a single IP from the ISP you must have a device doing the NAT function and that is generally a router.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom