More ports?

P

PPBart

Member
My Cisco gateway at home has four ports on the back, to which are connected two PC's, a printer, and my home security system. If I were to need to connect another device to my network, how would I accomplish this -- IOW, how best to add ports to the network?
 
beers

beers

Moderator
Staff member
Yeah, any unmanaged switch should do. No configuration required, just plug a single uplink from your router into the switch and everything else will be on the same subnet for all the other ports.
 
Geoff

Geoff

VIP Member
PPBart said:
Thanks for the info. Just out of curiosity, can you plug a switch into a switch? IOW, how far can you go with them?
Click to expand...
Yes you can. Do you mean how far distance wise, or how many can you connect together? If you need several ports, you're better off buying a switch with more ports, rather than multiple smaller switches.
 
beers

beers

Moderator
Staff member
PPBart said:
Thanks for the info. Just out of curiosity, can you plug a switch into a switch? IOW, how far can you go with them?
Click to expand...

You can plug as many switches together as you want, although all of the downstream clients are limited by the single uplink.

As stated though it's a better idea to get a larger switch since you will pass all of the traffic via the backplane at full line speed instead of aggregating your traffic into a single interface.
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
You can have up to 255 devices (pc, laptop, phones, tablets,etc.) attached to your network but you can have as many switches as you need. But again, just buy a switch with more ports unless you need switches in different rooms. I have a router with 4 ports on it and then I have a 8 port switch right next to it.
 
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