[Q] Network and Switch

Joshndroid · February 8, 2016

After looking at a lot of the networks in the 'show off your layout' thread, i have a couple question regarding switches/network.

I have been looking at switches and probably will grab a 12-24 port switch eventually, with the aim of it being a central unit and running cat6/whatever to the other parts of the house.

How many connections can you make from your modem/router to the initial switch, is a single line from your modem sufficient to a gigabit switch?

Can you improve throughput/stability by using more of the lan ports from your modem to the switch?

Does adding a switch on a switch (as i see has been done within the thread) degrade throughput back to the rest of the network?

Is it preferable to have your telephone line terminate to as central/most-open-place in the house so you can attach a modem/router combo unit directly to that and then have your switch run to the rest of the house? Or just best to leave it in its current location and not add any undue length to that line (to maybe get it to the most open location)

KraftDinner · February 8, 2016

Generally for a home network you would just have the router connected to the switch via ethernet, this would perform any external routing or routing between internal subnets. Now if we take things a little further and say we would like to provide some redundancy we could implement something called the hot standby routing protocol (HSRP) which would allow us to connect multiple routers to the switch, except only one of those routers would be doing all the work. Now in the event that this one router fails, another router that is connected to the switch will take over and do all the routing this allows for 0 downtime.

Now in regards to increasing the throughput in the network we could configure our machines that are connected to the network to use LACP which is link aggregation control protocol, this allows us to combine multiple network interface cards to work as one and increase throughput.

To answer the last bit of your question, the placement of the router / modem would only matter in the situation where you're using wireless, wired connections would not suffer. But you can always configure and implement a few wireless access points to solve that problem.

KraftDinner · February 8, 2016

Just now, KraftDinner said:

Generally for a home network you would just have the router connected to the switch via a single ethernet (make sure it is truly a CAT6 cable) , this would perform any external routing or routing between internal subnets. Now if we take things a little further and say we would like to provide some redundancy we could implement something called the hot standby routing protocol (HSRP) which would allow us to connect multiple routers to the switch, except only one of those routers would be doing all the work. Now in the event that this one router fails, another router that is connected to the switch will take over and do all the routing this allows for 0 downtime.

Now in regards to increasing the throughput in the network we could configure our machines that are connected to the network to use LACP which is link aggregation control protocol, this allows us to combine multiple network interface cards to work as one and increase throughput.

To answer the last bit of your question, the placement of the router / modem would only matter in the situation where you're using wireless, wired connections would not suffer. But you can always configure and implement a few wireless access points to solve that problem.

You_are_a_cunt · February 8, 2016

17 minutes ago, Joshndroid said:

How many connections can you make from your modem/router to the initial switch, is a single line from your modem sufficient to a gigabit switch?

It depends on the switch. Some have a single input port, some have multiple.

18 minutes ago, Joshndroid said:

Can you improve throughput/stability by using more of the lan ports from your modem to the switch?

Again, it depends on the switch and its ability to aggregate multiple input connections

18 minutes ago, Joshndroid said:

Does adding a switch on a switch (as i see has been done within the thread) degrade throughput back to the rest of the network?

If done right, the degradation should be minimal to the point where it's not noticeable. This, again, depends on the switch and number of concomitant clients

19 minutes ago, Joshndroid said:

Is it preferable to have your telephone line terminate to as central/most-open-place in the house so you can attach a modem/router combo unit directly to that and then have your switch run to the rest of the house? Or just best to leave it in its current location and not add any undue length to that line (to maybe get it to the most open location)

If by telephone line you're referring to the cable from the ISP's box to your house/apartment, you'll probably want to minimize the length of that cable (ISPs usually cheap out on cable quality, but not necessarily) so I would personally place the switch/router unit as close to the entry point of that cable and run the rest of the network from that point. If you're looking to also have a good WiFi connection throughout the entire living space, you'll want to place the router/wireless AP in a central point of the space.

Please note that CAT6 could be quite expensive and it maintains the maximum length of 100m. Anything past that will require some sort of extension (usually a router or switch) to prevent packet loss and signal degradation. Personally I wouldn't go over 50m, but that's just personal preference.

leadeater · February 8, 2016

30 minutes ago, revsilverspine said:

Please note that CAT6 could be quite expensive and it maintains the maximum length of 100m. Anything past that will require some sort of extension (usually a router or switch) to prevent packet loss and signal degradation. Personally I wouldn't go over 50m, but that's just personal preference.

All the Cat standards are rated to 100m. These are strict standards and anything that meets it will do 100m as per the rating, distance does not effect throughput/performance within this 100m.

High amounts of EMI is the only thing that will effect the cable's ability to function correctly if terminated properly, for this use one of the many types of shielded/foiled cables. At home you will not encounter this issue. Very few devices in your house generate noise in the correct spectrum and with high enough output to do so, with your microwave being one of them.

Basically distance is irrelevant, use up to the 100m there is no downside.

leadeater · February 8, 2016

1 hour ago, Joshndroid said:

After looking at a lot of the networks in the 'show off your layout' thread, i have a couple question regarding switches/network.

I have been looking at switches and probably will grab a 12-24 port switch eventually, with the aim of it being a central unit and running cat6/whatever to the other parts of the house.

How many connections can you make from your modem/router to the initial switch, is a single line from your modem sufficient to a gigabit switch?

Can you improve throughput/stability by using more of the lan ports from your modem to the switch?

Does adding a switch on a switch (as i see has been done within the thread) degrade throughput back to the rest of the network?

Is it preferable to have your telephone line terminate to as central/most-open-place in the house so you can attach a modem/router combo unit directly to that and then have your switch run to the rest of the house? Or just best to leave it in its current location and not add any undue length to that line (to maybe get it to the most open location)

1. This shouldn't be a big issue. The internet connection is so much slower than the link between the modem/router and the switch that this link will not be impacted by the number of active internet users. The router is the concern here and the internet connection speed.

Single connection will be fine.

2. Again the internet link is so low adding more connection from your local network to the modem/router will only add redundancy not throughput/performance. Also link aggregation would have to be setup between the modem/router and the switch. Active/Passive team only on the switch side of the connection is all that would be required, most home modem/router don't support link aggregation so is likely the only method you can use anyway.

Stability only, marginal benefit at best.

3. This depends on three factors. How many computers are on the down stream switch, the throughput required on the link between the switches and the capabilities of the up stream switch (ram,cpu, mac table size, pps etc). Unless you are buying extremely low end switches and pushing large amounts of throughput from multiple devices this won't be too much of an issue.

This is fine and fairly standard practice in larger networks.

4. The telephone line typically being the lowest quality cable so from a technical standpoint keep this as short as possible. If the modem/router is also your wireless AP then place it according to best signal for the devices using it.