Can I put a switch between my router and my bridged cable modem?

Qwizh · Jan 3, 2016

Helle Tom's Hardware community,

I am going to completely change the setup of my home network since I decided to switch to a different provider, so I thought this was the right time to do it. I am going to move my gaming/home theatre setup to a spare space in the back of the garage which is currently being used as a place to store whatever we have.

I am going to be putting the ISP provided cablemodem into bridge modus and use the ASUS RT-AC87U as router for my home network and I would like to place it in my new nerdcave. So I am wondering if I can connect the cablemodem (which is located in the living room, so very central) to a switch as uplink for wan, and hook the router up to the switch so the rest of the house can make use of the spare ports on the switch?

This might be a stupid question but I am kind of new to networking.

Greetings,
Qwizh

USAFRet · Jan 3, 2016

No.
It must be Modem->router->switch->devices

The modem will serve up one and only one IP address. To the first device it sees. Typically, this would be the router.
The router then creates internal IP addresses, for all the devices.

If it was Modem->switch->router->devices...

Whatever device was hanging off that switch and turned on first would be 'it'.

Qwizh · Jan 3, 2016

USAFRet :

Hmm right thank you very much!

drsantafe · Mar 12, 2017

Qwizh :

Helle Tom's Hardware community,

I am going to completely change the setup of my home network since I decided to switch to a different provider, so I thought this was the right time to do it. I am going to move my gaming/home theatre setup to a spare space in the back of the garage which is currently being used as a place to store whatever we have.

I am going to be putting the ISP provided cablemodem into bridge modus and use the ASUS RT-AC87U as router for my home network and I would like to place it in my new nerdcave. So I am wondering if I can connect the cablemodem (which is located in the living room, so very central) to a switch as uplink for wan, and hook the router up to the switch so the rest of the house can make use of the spare ports on the switch?

---------------------------------

Generally a switch/router twixt transparent modem and main router doesn't make much sense.

There might, however, be an application where it makes sense to put a switch or router between a transparent bridge modem and router: The switch/router could have a single connection to the modem and a single connection to the router. The switch /router in such a position could be doing something that the main router does not do. For example it could be a LEDE project router installed expressly for BlufferBloat control or perhaps for intelligently cleaning out advertisements from downloaded pages. Or it could be a dedicated firewall that has more options/capabilities than the main router.

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Can I put a switch between my router and my bridged cable modem?

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drsantafe

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