Connecting switch to switch

tobywuk

tobywuk

New Member
From what i have noticed most routers only have a low amount of RJ45 ethernet ports so im going to connect it straight to a central switch.

I have 5 diffrent rooms with multiple devices and im going to put a switch in each room for all the devices to connect to.

Is it ok to connect each room's switch to the main "central" switch? Will this create high traffic flow over the network and so slowing it down? Will a bottleneck occure by the "central" switch?
 
there should be a port that says uplink i could be wrong but i think to connect to a switch from a switch you need to put it in the uplink or buy a cross over cable
 
Yes, you do need to make sure you hook up your router to the uplink port on your main switch. Most home switches (i.e. LinkSys) have a uplink port that is labeled as uplink or has a picture of a globe on it. If it doesn't have an uplink port, then it doesn't matter.

It also won't slow down your network by using additional switches as the speed (anywhere from 100Mbps to 1000Mbps) is much faster than your router can handle (usually no more than 10Mbps). The only thing that would make your network slow down is the NAT, which happens because your provider gives you a single IP address which must be translated to a private network IP address to function (private IPs are in the 10.0.0.0, 172.168.0.0, or 192.168.0.0 ranges).

Another point to make note of is that you need a crossover cable to connect the switches together. If you need to know what a crossover cable is, just google it. It will probably be cheapest to buy rather than make your own cable, especially if you haven't before.

One last point: think about wireless. Going wireless will take out most of the hardware and wires running all over the house. Running with a LAN will give you a faster connection, but only within that LAN. Wireless G runs at 54Mbps, and most networks run at 10Mbps or lower. If you haven't bought the hardware yet, I'd recommend this option.

there should be a port that says uplink i could be wrong but i think to connect to a switch from a switch you need to put it in the uplink or buy a cross over cable
Click to expand...
 
Switches are a little bit intelligent. So transfering files between computers on the same switch won't stress the other ones. Only when going from one switch to another, will it go over the main switch.

One bottneck will occour, if multiple computers across switches exchange data at the same time. They'll all need to share the one port that connects the switches.

Switches today normally has autosensing feature, so both straight and crossed cables can be used between them (without worring about a special uplink port).
 
most switches dont have uplink ports and like tyttebøvs says the only bottleneck
will happen id between one switch and the next but this will not be that bad.
however the bottleneck issue will be bad when mutiple users attempt to access the internet via the router.
 
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