Chaining switches

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FallenMystic

Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2006
Messages
894
Greetings all,

Looken for a bit of advice; currently I’ve got a 15 to 17 station LAN, (plus a few extra servers ports,) running off from 3 different 8 port 10/100 switches. The way I’ve got it configured its running from the router to switch 1, switch 1 then feeds both switch 2 and 3 and the lines go out to the PC’s from there.

What I’d like to know how much, on average, do you exalted gurus of the networking heavens think I’m degrading my signal on the subsequent jumps through routers?

I’m looking to upgrade to gigabit but I’m trying to see where my money would be best spent, in a single 24 + port switch or in multiple 8 port switches set up similarly to the way I have it above, or a better way if you have info on that. Price wise I’m looking at a significant difference, would I be in performance as well?

Thanks for the information, and happy holidays to all!
 
The nice thing about switches is that there's no such thing as degrading your signal in a setup like yours. It's perfectly fine. Basically your first switch is the main collapse point which is how most people do things. Everything collapses back to one switch.

Is this a home network? If so, you could certainly go with a bunch of smaller switches again to save money. You shouldn't see any performance issues.
 
Technically daisy chaining switches is not a problem, assuming your aware of the potential issues. The biggest being the bandwidth to and from each switch will be limited to the port speed, being oversubscribed by 8x in your current situation. Make sure you don't loop them!

I just bought a Netgear GS724T, gigE 24 port none blocking switch for my home system. So far I'd recommend it if you need something fast without routing. It does have Vlans, SNMP etc. Price was just over $300.
 
The only problem with daisy-chained smaller switches is that you create a bottleneck where you connect 7 machines on one of the secondary switches to a single 10/100 port on the first, so it's not great if all of them are doing high-bandwidth stuff.

Ideally, if you want the better bandwidth spread and can be arsed to cable all to a single point then one bigger switch would be better. If not, don't worry about it.
 
For the monthly LAN I run we do a central 24-port Netgear Gigabit switch(unmanaged) and from there branch off 5, 8, and 16 port gigabit switches. All servers run directly off the central 24 port switch. There is never less than 66Mbps/user subscription. We have never had any speed or ping issues with this setup(except when some dumbass looped a branch switch), which is impressive since the three fileservers average a combined 1.5Gbit/sec(6 Terabytes of combined data available) output for the duration of the LAN.
 
Should be no issue daisy chaining, especially for a LAN. Most games do not take much bandwidth compared to what a 100 or 1000 link speed can handle.
 
valve1138 said:
Is this a home network? If so, you could certainly go with a bunch of smaller switches again to save money. You shouldn't see any performance issues.
Click to expand...

Correct home network, mostly gaming, ocasionally I open up the server so some folks can hit it from outside the LAN as well.


Thanks everyone for the input, I'll most likely end up going the route multiple smaller giga-switches just run any servers off from the primary switch; unless of course prices drop on 16 to 24 port gigaswitches.

Thanks again
Fallen
 
From what I have seen the best Price/Port ratio for smaller setups seems to be with the 8 port gigabit switches.
 
Grentz said:
From what I have seen the best Price/Port ratio for smaller setups seems to be with the 8 port gigabit switches.
Click to expand...

Thanks, this is what I've been finding as well, (probably the most efficient to what I'm looking to do as well.)

Any suggestions on a brand/model that are the better ones out there?
 
FallenMystic said:
Correct home network, mostly gaming, ocasionally I open up the server so some folks can hit it from outside the LAN as well.
Click to expand...

Excellent. No need to spend more money on a bigger switch then. I have a bunch of small Netgears here I use at home because my 24 port is full. :eek:

No problems at all with them. They're the GS605's. I don't knwo if they have an 8 port version of them though.
 
Concentric said:
I quite like my Netgear GS108, looks awesome imo and hasn't given me any problems.
Click to expand...

I've used dozens of these, and litterly hundreds of the GS105s. I've had one 108 and maybe (2) 105s fail in years out of the entire batch. Both are Prosafe and guaranteed for life. I highly recommend them!
 
It depends...

Your weak point is that link between the router and the first switch. Since ALL data to the internet has to pass through that one port (and any data going to any other devices connected to the other LAN ports on the router), if you are exceeding 1GB you are exceeding the ports bandwidth.

Any reason you can't route a separate cable from multiple LAN ports on the router to each switch individually?

FallenMystic said:
Greetings all,

Looken for a bit of advice; currently I’ve got a 15 to 17 station LAN, (plus a few extra servers ports,) running off from 3 different 8 port 10/100 switches. The way I’ve got it configured its running from the router to switch 1, switch 1 then feeds both switch 2 and 3 and the lines go out to the PC’s from there.

What I’d like to know how much, on average, do you exalted gurus of the networking heavens think I’m degrading my signal on the subsequent jumps through routers?

I’m looking to upgrade to gigabit but I’m trying to see where my money would be best spent, in a single 24 + port switch or in multiple 8 port switches set up similarly to the way I have it above, or a better way if you have info on that. Price wise I’m looking at a significant difference, would I be in performance as well?

Thanks for the information, and happy holidays to all!
Click to expand...
 
DLink DGS-2208 is a fine switch and very inexpensive. Also supports Jumbo Frames if you need it.

If you want to spend around $200 for a 16 port smart-switch, the DGS-1216T is a nice choice. I got tired of small plastic switches that tend to lift up in the air when all the ports are full (due to their light weight) so I went with the DGS-1216T and bolted it to the back of my networking stand. It's a big metal box so you really need to want this :)

FallenMystic said:
Thanks, this is what I've been finding as well, (probably the most efficient to what I'm looking to do as well.)

Any suggestions on a brand/model that are the better ones out there?
Click to expand...
 
I'm happy to hear you have had good luck with the Netgear.

Me? Not so much. I went through two blue-box Netgears in a year, and I'm done with them.

Concentric said:
I quite like my Netgear GS108, looks awesome imo and hasn't given me any problems.
Click to expand...
 
Wow, you have filled a 24 port switch in a HOME network? AND you have 3 other 8 ports going?

Shit man, I thought I was bad LOL

That's some serious stuff there :)

I think you are ready for a big honkin smart-switch. A 48-port or a pair of 16 ports.

With that much going on, I think you are at the "Just do it!" stage :)

valve1138 said:
Excellent. No need to spend more money on a bigger switch then. I have a bunch of small Netgears here I use at home because my 24 port is full. :eek:

No problems at all with them. They're the GS605's. I don't knwo if they have an 8 port version of them though.
Click to expand...
 
TechLarry said:
Wow, you have filled a 24 port switch in a HOME network? AND you have 3 other 8 ports going?

Shit man, I thought I was bad LOL

That's some serious stuff there :)

I think you are ready for a big honkin smart-switch. A 48-port or a pair of 16 ports.

With that much going on, I think you are at the "Just do it!" stage :)
Click to expand...


I have every port patched in, even the unused ones. But yeah, there's a lot of stuff plugged into it. :p I don't always have the small switches plugged in. Just when I need extra ports for a project or something. But there is a 5 port sitting right next to me now chugging away.

It's great what you can do with a home network. I have Airport Expresses everywhere so I can hear Sirius radio all over the house. 6 of those and they're all wired. Then SageTV nodes everywhere. 2 Servers, Xbox 360, etc, etc. You get the idea. :D
 
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