Wall ports and Switches help

[MajorFoley]

Hey guys so we have just moved house to a place with alot of wall ports and i need to get a switch setup. A family friend gave us theirs when they didn't want it anymore, a 24 port netgear JFS524 10/100mbps switch.

The problem is the previous owner of this house did not mark ANYTHING with a number so it's going to be a trial and error kinda thing.

So the situation is the router is in another room withe the switch going to be in a box in the garage. The routers LAN/WAN port is being used for our fixed wireless connection and i think how it's supposed to connect to the switch is that one of the wall ports patches back to where the switch is going be plugged into. So i haven't really setup my own switch before so when i get to it will the switch's LED's only light up when it's confirmed its getting a connection from both sides? And how do i know if the ports on the switch are 10 or 100? It doesnt really have any markings on it that seem to differentiate ports.

[W-L]

7 minutes ago, MajorFoley said:

Hey guys so we have just moved house to a place with alot of wall ports and i need to get a switch setup. A family friend gave us theirs when they didn't want it anymore, a 24 port netgear JFS524 10/100mbps switch.

The problem is the previous owner of this house did not mark ANYTHING with a number so it's going to be a trial and error kinda thing.

So the situation is the router is in another room withe the switch going to be in a box in the garage. The routers LAN/WAN port is being used for our fixed wireless connection and i think how it's supposed to connect to the switch is that one of the wall ports patches back to where the switch is going be plugged into. So i haven't really setup my own switch before so when i get to it will the switch's LED's only light up when it's confirmed its getting a connection from both sides? And how do i know if the ports on the switch are 10 or 100? It doesnt really have any marking on it

You can use a cable tester to find out which cable is which. 

https://www.amazon.com/TimeOwner-Network-Ethernet-Telephone-Tracking/dp/B01CZDL9PO/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1507358989&sr=8-10

[MajorFoley]

1 minute ago, W-L said:

You can use a cable tester to find out which cable is which. 

https://www.amazon.com/TimeOwner-Network-Ethernet-Telephone-Tracking/dp/B01CZDL9PO/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1507358989&sr=8-10

I think im gonna need a tutorial for something for that... Will take a look on youtube, too bad Amazon doesn't ship it to Australia

[PineyCreek]

Even more basic, you could hook up a device to the network cable like a laptop, then connect the switch to the other end.  If you see the light come on the switch, you've found your cable.  Even if the device isn't passing network traffic, you should see some evidence of physical activity if it makes a connection to the switch.

 

Here's the support page for the switch:

 

https://www.netgear.com/support/product/JFS524.aspx

 

Looks like the switch does have at least basic LEDs indicating port activity.

[PineyCreek]

Or if you need to be cheap, you can get a simple cable pair tester...leave the transmitter end at one end of the cable and connect the receiver to each cable in turn until one lights up.

[MajorFoley]

2 minutes ago, PineyCreek said:

Even more basic, you could hook up a device to the network cable like a laptop, then connect the switch to the other end.  If you see the light come on the switch, you've found your cable.  Even if the device isn't passing network traffic, you should see some evidence of physical activity if it makes a connection to the switch.

 

Here's the support page for the switch:

 

https://www.netgear.com/support/product/JFS524.aspx

 

Looks like the switch does have at least basic LEDs indicating port activity.

Right well looking from that manual it says top LED is activity and bottom LED if yellow is 10mbps or green if its 100, how does the switch decide? Which is also weird cos the next to the Top LED it has 100m and next to the bottom ones it has link/act with 2 rows.

[PineyCreek]

2 minutes ago, MajorFoley said:

Right well looking from that manual it says top LED is activity and bottom LED if yellow is 10mbps or green if its 100, how does the switch decide? Which is also weird cos the next to the Top LED it has 100m and next to the bottom ones it has link/act with 2 rows.

Link/Act should light up when it detects a connection.  Speed's usually decided through an auto-negotiation process that occurs between the switch and the connected device, unless you have configured the switchports to do otherwise. 

 

There's also the possibility that auto-negotiation will fail, in which case it may disable the link or fail it out at something like 10M half duplex.  Depends on the switch, the configuration of the devices at either end, cabling quality and number of pairs in the cable (depends on cable type and age, screwups with crimping, among other things).  Usually if you have good cables and your devices aren't screwy, auto-negotiation works fine for most everything not using fiber.  Auto-negotatiation is the default for 1G connections and higher.

[MajorFoley]

1 minute ago, PineyCreek said:

Link/Act should light up when it detects a connection.  Speed's usually decided through an auto-negotiation process that occurs between the switch and the connected device, unless you have configured the switchports to do otherwise. 

Just want it for basic 100mbps connections through the wall ports we have, not gonna setup a huge server or anything and if i recall you need a command line or something to setup a switch manually dont ya? It would be connceted to my TP-Link Archer VR400 modem router.

[PineyCreek]

Just now, MajorFoley said:

Just want it for basic 100mbps connections through the wall ports we have, not gonna setup a huge server or anything and if i recall you need a command line or something to setup a switch manually dont ya? It would be connceted to my TP-Link Archer VR400 modem router.

Some have fancy GUIs to adjust settings.  Base switch?  Not too many features.  Check the support page I linked earlier if you want to dive deeper into it.  You shouldn't have trouble unless the cabling you have is bad.

[MajorFoley]

7 minutes ago, PineyCreek said:

Some have fancy GUIs to adjust settings.  Base switch?  Not too many features.  Check the support page I linked earlier if you want to dive deeper into it.  You shouldn't have trouble unless the cabling you have is bad.

Guys cabling seems quite good from what i've seen, all tidy where the switch is gonna be with what seems like 48 ports i think, just gonna be a bit of guess work, will tell my friend to bring his laptop so we can go through them port by port.  But for now i think i can at least try to find the port the router is coming from. This is where all the wall ports lead i believe

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uymoxr5w4g9fiwa/20170915_124451.jpg?dl=0

Both rows are marked 1-24 although dont think theres THAT many cables

[PineyCreek]

If the cable from the router is going into the switch, and this is a basic switch, you don't need to worry too much.  The switch will enable the router to see everything, hand out IP addresses via DHCP as required or you can use static addressing depending on how you have your router setup.  What port you connect to on the switch is only going to matter if you're configuring each port individually for a particular purpose (example a VLAN for VoIP), or if you have a preference in terms of mapping (ex. Router on port 1, network connected toaster on 2).  You're doing a base setup with a flat network.  No worries.  Connect to the router or to the switch.  It will all behave as one network.  Even the base setup on a consumer router will have enough DHCP addressing space available for that many ports, and I've never seen one that out of the box didn't have DHCP on by default.

 

Network source -> WAN on router -> LAN port on router -> whatever switch port.  That's the only cabling that matters on this setup in terms of what port goes where.  If the modem/router is taking its input from phone line or coaxial, then you don't even need to worry about  the WAN port on the router.

[MajorFoley]

3 minutes ago, PineyCreek said:

If the cable from the router is going into the switch, and this is a basic switch, you don't need to worry too much.  The switch will enable the router to see everything, hand out IP addresses via DHCP as required or you can use static addressing depending on how you have your router setup.  What port you connect to on the switch is only going to matter if you're configuring each port individually for a particular purpose (example a VLAN for VoIP), or if you have a preference in terms of mapping (ex. Router on port 1, network connected toaster on 2).  You're doing a base setup with a flat network.  No worries.  Connect to the router or to the switch.  It will all behave as one network.  Even the base setup on a consumer router will have enough DHCP addressing space available for that many ports, and I've never seen one that out of the box didn't have DHCP on by default.

Right well in 5-10 minutes im gonna plug in the switch and go one by one till the switch finds the router, it'll only be temporary because the cabinet where the switch is gonna be has no power (gonna run an extension lead) and right now the fridge and freezer are taking the power ports and i dont have a spare power bank on hand just yet. I'm hoping everything will be on only one of those Rows and not both, it'll save so much trouble

[PineyCreek]

3 minutes ago, MajorFoley said:

Right well in 5-10 minutes im gonna plug in the switch and go one by one till the switch finds the router, it'll only be temporary because the cabinet where the switch is gonna be has no power (gonna run an extension lead) and right now the fridge and freezer are taking the power ports and i dont have a spare power bank on hand just yet. I'm hoping everything will be on only one of those Rows and not both, it'll save so much trouble

Hit up the forum if you have trouble.  You'll almost always get a response.

[MajorFoley]

19 minutes ago, PineyCreek said:

Hit up the forum if you have trouble.  You'll almost always get a response.

Well the good news is i didn't need a laptop  And it also uses all rows so my router gets connected through number 23 top rack and my room number 8 top rack and its working so now all i gotta do is get it constant power.

[PineyCreek]

39 minutes ago, MajorFoley said:

Well the good news is i didn't need a laptop  And it also uses all rows so my router gets connected through number 23 top rack and my room number 8 top rack and its working so now all i gotta do is get it constant power.

Surge protector.  Don't forget the surge protector.  The network jack is another way to get a surge if the switch gets a jolt.

[MajorFoley]

5 hours ago, PineyCreek said:

Surge protector.  Don't forget the surge protector.  The network jack is another way to get a surge if the switch gets a jolt.

https://www.target.com.au/p/crest-4-socket-surge-protection-powerboard/60222916?utm_term=60222916&utm_content=crest-4-socket-surge-protection-powerboard&utm_source=google&utm_medium=merchant-site&utm_campaign=merchant-site&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI0KO_-9ve1gIVyJW9Ch0JKQirEAQYBCABEgLJh_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CPOp04Hc3tYCFY03lgodn00Faw

That do?

[PineyCreek]

13 hours ago, MajorFoley said:

https://www.target.com.au/p/crest-4-socket-surge-protection-powerboard/60222916?utm_term=60222916&utm_content=crest-4-socket-surge-protection-powerboard&utm_source=google&utm_medium=merchant-site&utm_campaign=merchant-site&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI0KO_-9ve1gIVyJW9Ch0JKQirEAQYBCABEgLJh_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CPOp04Hc3tYCFY03lgodn00Faw

That do?

I can't tell what the joule rating is on the surge protector, or at least I don't see it on the package or description.  I'm of the opinion to always get a surge protector that lists its protection level along with having an insurance policy along with it.  Most major brands do this, although I don't know if it's allowed in Aussie-land.  Most of the time you could say any surge protection is better than none, but I don't know the 'Crest' brand outside of a name for toothpaste.