Ethernet switch recommendations for gaming

[Squish4058]

So in semtember I am starting year 2 of my degree and moving into a house with 3 other people and a spare room. We want 6 cables to be run, 1 to each bedroom, 1 to the living room and I asked last minute to have a second to mine.
Just ordered 7 20m cat 6 flat style ethernet and we will be routing them through the house soon.

Basically the hub we will get from the ISP will have 4 ports max so I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations for a 10 port ethernet switch that can happily split I think it was 200mbit up with the possibility of later upgrading the ISP contract to 300 or higher if needed. At times we will all be gaming.

Price range is preferably £20

[mariushm]

Just get a decent 16 port gigabit switch and you'll be fine. Each port will be 1gbps, so it will easily support future upgrades of your internet connection.

 

Decent means don't go for the cheapest models out there with plastic cases and power adapters that die in a year due to overheating, buy something in a metallic case with some decent specifications.

Here's one that seems to be up to the job: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704064&ignorebbr=1

 

[Squish4058]

Should probably point out the price range is £20 but I will look around, ive seen similar ones on ebay like that, thanks man

[burnttoastnice]

Pretty much any gigabit switch will do. I've personally had an almost-always positive experience with TP-Link and Netgear products so I'd go after anything made by them.

At the moment I'm using a TP-Link 100Mbit 24 port switch that was previously used in a business.

[Gachr]

You can't really get a 16 port switch for that price (there are no 10 port, perhaps 12 port but rare), your best bet is an 8 port. I recommend the TP-Link Metal Gigabit Switch, I have the 5 port one and it's doing really well. The 8 port variant is right at your price point (23 quid in my shop).

[Squish4058]

15 minutes ago, Gachr said:

You can't really get a 16 port switch for that price (there are no 10 port, perhaps 12 port but rare), your best bet is an 8 port. I recommend the TP-Link Metal Gigabit Switch, I have the 5 port one and it's doing really well. The 8 port variant is right at your price point (23 quid in my shop).

So something like this
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TP-Link-8-Port-Gigabit-Switch-TL-SG1008D-/112026542903?hash=item1a154d6337:g:hWEAAOSwepJXXqax
and it is out of price range even second hand? ive seen some ebay bids for 16 ports under £20 but I will have to see if they finish under that price.

Thanks a lot man btw

[Gachr]

1 minute ago, kris2340k said:

So something like this
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TP-Link-8-Port-Gigabit-Switch-TL-SG1008D-/112026542903?hash=item1a154d6337:g:hWEAAOSwepJXXqax
and it is out of price range even second hand? ive seen some ebay bids for 16 ports under £20 but I will have to see if they finish under that price.

Thanks a lot man btw

It is similar, but not as well made and it might not be as good.

I found it on Overclockers:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/tp-link-8-port-10-100-1000mbps-desktop-switch-tl-sg108-nw-155-tp.html

 

The cheapest 16 port gigabit in my shop was 55 quid, and on overclockers it's 57/63 (fishy brand/good brand), and both are huge.

[brwainer]

There usn't any issue with having 3 computers/lines connected to the hub, and the rest connected to the switch, so if you get an 8 port switch you'd have 10 usable ports for computers. 

[Unhelpful]

10 hours ago, Gachr said:

there are no 10 port

The Cisco SG300 would like a word with you.

 

(I know 2 are gigabit SFP's, but still.)

[brwainer]

5 minutes ago, JoeyDM said:

The Cisco SG300 would like a word with you.

 

(I know 2 are gigabit SFP's, but still.)

That's considered an 8 port switch with two uplinks. Just like nearly all SMB or enterprise 24 port switches are really 26 or 28, and 48 port switches are 50 or 52.

[Unhelpful]

3 minutes ago, brwainer said:

That's considered an 8 port switch with two uplinks. 

I know, I know. Hence the bottom line. I just made the comment because Cisco describes it as a 10 port on the product page  

 

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/switches/sg300-10-10-port-gigabit-managed-switch/model.html

 

I know it's not right.

[Squish4058]

1 hour ago, brwainer said:

There usn't any issue with having 3 computers/lines connected to the hub, and the rest connected to the switch, so if you get an 8 port switch you'd have 10 usable ports for computers. 

Yeah I thought this. Another question tho. While I know a standard Cat6 or even cat5 [Between the router and the switch] wont limit the speed of anything off the switch.
Would it perhaps slightly slow any by maybe like 10% and should I bother maybe getting a slightly more expensive one like a Cat 6 EMI shielded one

[Squish4058]

Right Ive got a bunch of TP link and NETGEAR 8 port switches bookmarked on ebay and will keep an eye open. 

[brwainer]

17 minutes ago, kris2340k said:

Yeah I thought this. Another question tho. While I know a standard Cat6 or even cat5 [Between the router and the switch] wont limit the speed of anything off the switch.
Would it perhaps slightly slow any by maybe like 10% and should I bother maybe getting a slightly more expensive one like a Cat 6 EMI shielded one

There will be no measurable difference in speed unless you start going to 10Gb, at which point poorer lines will start causing packet errors.

[brwainer]

1 hour ago, JoeyDM said:

I know, I know. Hence the bottom line. I just made the comment because Cisco describes it as a 10 port on the product page  

 

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/switches/sg300-10-10-port-gigabit-managed-switch/model.html

 

I know it's not right.

I'd actually be curious to know about the internal architecture - did the really make a 10 port switch chip or are they using a 16 port chip or two 8 port chips? Or is there a CPU inside that the SFPs connect to?

[Squish4058]

1 minute ago, brwainer said:

There will be no measurable difference in speed unless you start going to 10Gb, at which point poorer lines will start causing packet errors.

oh cool, thanks. That is pretty much everything. Are there any pages for routers. We will be getting a Virgin Media superhub 3 and im going through youtube reviews of it later today

[dlink377]

I have expensive network switch from Cisco and super cheap no brand one from ebay (all gigabit switch), and there is no difference on home usage. Just find any cheapest one will do, or find a second hand one is also quite good. I usually use TP-Link for value setup, or D-Link for medium setup.

[dlink377]

I forget to add, that I suggest if buying a home switch, such as 5 port or 8 port GBe Switch, I highly suggest buying one with standard voltage and power connector.

 

Most TP-Link require 9V voltage, 9V adapter not really easy to get (although quite easy online), and more expensive than 12V counterpart.

 

The best one is one uses 12V voltage with normal 2.5mm DC barrel jack, usually chinese OEM switches or NETGEAR (at least the old prosafe one) uses this.

 

D-Link usually uses 5V and small DC barrel jack, don't really like it since I must cut the connector to new 5v adaptor, although you can just use phone adapter which is easier to buy.

 

Switches rarely fails, even the no brand cheap one. The only things most likely will fails is the power adapter.

[Squish4058]

8 hours ago, brwainer said:

There will be no measurable difference in speed unless you start going to 10Gb, at which point poorer lines will start causing packet errors.

Very true. I wish everyone would just start using Type C or even USB2 instead of those barrel jacks, they could just require more current with the same voltage. That way we could power all peripherals by USB type C with high currents.

[mariushm]

Let's summarize:

 

* There's absolutely no quality difference between various ratings of network cable. Cat5e is capable of 1gbps speeds, anything higher (Cat6 or Cat6a) will not give you any higher speeds or smaller pings or any kind of benefit for 1gbps.

For 10 gbps speeds, you would absolutely need at least Cat6 (as long as there's only a handful of cables grouped together and the distance is smaller than 35 meters) or Cat6a for any situation.

* The type of wire inside the cable can make a difference. Quality network cables use proper copper strands inside each wire. Cheap network cables are made of CCA  (Copper Clad Aluminum), strands of aluminum wire covered with a very thin layer of copper, these are much cheaper to manufacture and they work just as well as quality cables for short distances.

For long distances, the aluminum has higher resistance than copper so the network card and the switch need to use more power to send data reliably, and often because network cards are configured in "Green Mode", or "Eco Savings" or whatever, you get the picture, it's possible to have slow speeds or random disconnects and reconnects to the switch. By disabling any power saving feature in the network card's configuration (see device manager, network card) you can work around these issues.

 

* Basically all switches work with low voltages, like 3.6v or 3.3v or 2.5v so all switches use DC-DC converters to convert whatever is on the DC in connector to lower voltages. You can't make a switch quality statement based on the fact that the switch is powered by 5v or 7.5v or 9v.  What you can derive from this is that if a switch is powered from 7.5v, there's probably about 80% chance it will also work from 9v, or the other way around. (Of course, the dc-dc converter may be factory optimized for that specific voltage so with another voltage is may whine or overheat but in most cases it will work).

With 5v switches, it's risky, some of those use DC-DC converter chips are optimized for low voltages or made with usb power in mind, meaning they may be damaged if there's more than 6v or something like that at the input.

 

* Cheap "home use" switches are pretty much all the same. Especially 5 and 8 port switches, pretty much all of them use a very integrated chips that contain everything needed to create a switch, except the jacks and isolation transformers for each jack.  Basically, a switch is made of the main chip, a tiny memory chip holding configuration and maybe the software running inside the chip (the chip reads everything when it's powered the first time), isolation transformers for each jack and the dc-dc converters required to create the small voltages the main chip works with. 

 

* Often, the chip used in cheap 5 port switches is the same chip used by good brands like TP-Link or d-link, generic chips made by Realtek or other network specialized semiconductor manufacturers.

 

* some very cheap 8 port switches may have two 5 port chips inside, and the second chip is basically connected to the first chip - you have a switch in a switch. You'd have the first 4 gigabit ports on the first chip, and the last 4 gigabit ports connected to the first chip through a 1 gbps link, which means if you had four computers connected to the last four jacks on the switch and all four of them would download data, each computer would only be able to download at 1/4 of 1gbps.

This was more common with 100mbps switches, when chips were more expensive. Nowadays, a 8port 1gbps switch IC is just a bit more expensive than 5port ICs so it's not as common practice, the added pcb space and power consumption of two chips often costs more than the price difference between chips so it's not done anymore.

 

* The difference between cheaper and more quality switches starts at 16 ports or higher. The difference consists of how much bandwidth the chip has internally and how many packets of data it can handle and how fast it can pass the packets between ports. For example, a cheap 16 port switch chip may have only 8-10 gbps of bandwidth, which means if all 16 ports would be used at close to 1gbps, you'd hit that 8-10gbps limit. Luckily even common cheap TP-Link or D-Link switches typically have 20-30 gbps of bandwidth these days.

 

There's other things that should be mentioned but this post is already long enough.

Quote

Very true. I wish everyone would just start using Type C or even USB2 instead of those barrel jacks, they could just require more current with the same voltage. That way we could power all peripherals by USB type C with high currents.

Barrel jacks are not patented and they're just as standardized as usb connectors. The manufacturer of the switch would have to pay the USB consortium licensing fees to put the connector on the switch, not to mention it would be  a more expensive connector. USB type c connectors are also usually surface mount, which means they can break more easily if someone pulls the cable or switch falls off the desk / wall etc