Placement of switch in home network

[Mr Technician]

Up until recently I had been using a regular gigabit router with 4 ports and an unmanaged 5 port network switch. I recently acquired a 24 port hp managed switch and am trying to decide how to wire it. I'm debating between connecting my main computers directly to the router or running them through the switch. It's technically a more direct connection to the internet but it's not like running all wired internet traffic through the switch will matter. Of course, connecting everything to the switch will result in better in network throughput, especially for my storage server (and the switching capacity is definitely higher on the hp switch than on my router). Would there be any reason to connect some devices directly to the router rather than through the switch?

[Crunchy Dragon]

Having better throughput per device would be a big plus.

 

It's not like your switch has any shortage of ports, either.

[Windows7ge]

21 minutes ago, ThatFlashCat said:

Would there be any reason to connect some devices directly to the router rather than through the switch?

For all intensive purposes, few that I can think of. Only thing that comes to mind is if you wanted to configure LA between the router and a compatible device. Even then the same operation could be done through the switch.

[KuJoe]

Just plug them all into the switch. The only reason I plug anything else into the router is if they need their own IP subnet with DHCP and I don't want to play with VLANs (i.e. testing/dev).

[Mr Technician]

Fair enough, thanks. I'm just waiting on some two foot network cables and a noctua 40 mm fan. The stock one is LOUD.

[Mr Technician]

2 hours ago, KuJoe said:

Just plug them all into the switch. The only reason I plug anything else into the router is if they need their own IP subnet with DHCP and I don't want to play with VLANs (i.e. testing/dev).

Yeah I'll keep the DHCP server on the router itself. I doubt the switch can even perform DHCP at all though.

[KuJoe]

3 hours ago, ThatFlashCat said:

Yeah I'll keep the DHCP server on the router itself. I doubt the switch can even perform DHCP at all though.

It can't, which means you can either setup VLANs (if your router supports it) or you'd need to plug directly into the router for additional subnets. I personally use VLANs for my permanent subnets but for testing and such it's just easier to plug things into the router directly and then delete it when I'm done.

[Mr Technician]

9 hours ago, KuJoe said:

It can't, which means you can either setup VLANs (if your router supports it) or you'd need to plug directly into the router for additional subnets. I personally use VLANs for my permanent subnets but for testing and such it's just easier to plug things into the router directly and then delete it when I'm done.

I've got a basic consumer grade TP-Link C7 AC1750 router so I know it doesn't support VLANs, though it does support enterprise WPA2 of all things.