Networking Question

I have a 4 port Linksys router. Although it is probably 5 or 6 years old,
it still works great. I need more ports in the the house, and don't want to
go wireless.

Can I buy an 8 or 12 port switch, and connect it to the router?

If I do, will I still be at 100mpbs, or will I drop down to 10mpbs if I use
a switch?

Can I just run one wire from the router to the switch, and then have all my
connections go from the switch to the various wall outlets in the house?
I have a mess already, so I'd like to keep it fairly organized.

Thanks for any advice.

 

Yes, just plug the switch into the router and everything should work.
Switched traffic always runs at full speed on each port so you'll have
100 mbit available.

 

Get a switch, and plug it in to one of the spare ports. Now you can fan out
from the switch. It should work very well.

--

JANA
_____


I have a 4 port Linksys router. Although it is probably 5 or 6 years old,
it still works great. I need more ports in the the house, and don't want to
go wireless.

Can I buy an 8 or 12 port switch, and connect it to the router?

If I do, will I still be at 100mpbs, or will I drop down to 10mpbs if I use
a switch?

Can I just run one wire from the router to the switch, and then have all my
connections go from the switch to the various wall outlets in the house?
I have a mess already, so I'd like to keep it fairly organized.

Thanks for any advice.

 

As long as you buy a switch capable of 100mpbs, which all current models are
capable of. If I were you I'd buy a gigabit (1000mbps) switch so that you are
ready for future expansion, rather than investing in old technology. If you
replace the router with a gigabit router you might end up with a much faster
network, but keep in mind that PCI is still a bottleneck for gigabit ethernet,
so to get the full speed you'll need a motherboard with built-in gigabit
ethernet (dont even consider usb).

Yes, and a switch is much better than a hub, because hubs are stupid, switches
are smart (hubs send all packets on all ports, leaving it to the devices
connected to the ports to reject packets with wrong addresses. Switches, on
the other hand, only send packets to the port with the device with the correct
address attatched to it). In other words, far fewer collisions occur with
switches than with hubs, thus, faster, more reliable connections. Routers are
usually hub topology, not switches, or at least, they were up until recently,
and I suspect many still are. So taking a single line out of your router to a
switch and then splitting off the switch to your networked devices is actually
a much better network topology than if you were to run all your devices off the
router's ports.

 

16 ports for $30US plus shipping:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=CX-S3016M&cat=NET

John