On Sep 6, 1:53 pm, Jeff Liebermann <je...@cruzio.com> wrote:
> DeanB <deanbrow...@yahoo.com> hath wroth:
>
> >Although I'm a software developer, I am not so familiar with
> >networking technologies, and I would like a sanity check on this
> >before I purchase anything:
>
> Wireless has been known to cause insanity. Or, perhaps one needs to
> be insane to get involved in wireless. My brain is too far gone to
> decide which is true.
>
> >In my living room now, I have cable internet coming into a Motorola
> >Surfboard cable modem, and out of that into a Linksys WRT54G wireless/
> >4 port router. All is fine. I want to keep the wireless on this level
> >of the house.
>
> >However, in the basement, the last owner installed a small hub with
> >ethernet going into 8 rooms (nice!). I want to purchase a new switch
> >(8 or 16 port), install it in the basement with all the ethernet lines
> >branching out from there.
>
> Check your cabling. Does it say CAT5 or CAT5e on the cable jacket? If
> not, you may have a performance or data corruption problem. The small
> hub might be 10baseT (10 Mbit/sec) only, which means that the previous
> owner may have been cheap and used CAT3 cable. That's fine for
> 10Mbits/sec but will not work at 100BaseT or gigabit.
>
> >Question 1: What would be an appropriate switch here? I like Linksys,
> >and the basement setup is a rack mount system. Not sure which model to
> >buy.
>
> I hate to admit to random behavior (a sure sign of insanity), but I
> tend to use whatever switch I can find. Sometimes, it's the cheap
> piece of junk that the big box store has on sale. Other times, it's
> some surplus rack mounted managed (SNMP) devices that I picked up
> cheap on eBay. I don't recall ever making an attempt to optimize my
> switch purchase by any feature other than price.
>
> The major features that should be considered are:
> 1. Number of ports (there's never enough)
> 2. Speed. Do you need or want gigabit? I would because it seems
> that almost everything these daze is going gigabit ethernet.
> 3. Management. Do you plan to monitor or control traffic with SNMP?
> If so, you need a "managed" switch. I don't think you need this.
> 4. VLAN. Are you planning to seperate broadcast domains? With a
> system as small as yours, probably not.
>
> Rack mounting is nice, but not really necessary for a small switch. I
> have 4 racks in my house, which function as storage than as an
> equipment mounting. For small odd size boxes, I have several shelves
> full of junk. Works well.
>
> I guess I do have a favored ethernet rack mounted switch. Netgear
> FS524 (24 port 100/10base-T). About $45 including shipping used on
> eBay. Make sure you get the weird looking rack ears. The bad news is
> that it has a small fan inside, which might be a problem if you don't
> like noise. It also doesn't do gigabit ethernet or SNMP management.
> However, it is cheap.
>
> >Question 2: Can I simply run an ethernet cable up from on of the ports
> >on this new switch to my WRT54G upstairs?
>
> Yep. You can daisy chain ethernet switches until you hit some timing
> limit (at about 1500 ft end to end). Each segment must also be less
> than 300ft. You can't do that with ethernet hubs. Also, there are
> many types of "ethernet cable". Methinks CAT5e is what you want.
>
> Drivel: I was bored one day and needed some entertainment. So, I dug
> out a mess of ethernet crossover cables, and ran them between adjacent
> ethernet ports on a pile of 3ea 24 port ethernet switches. I think
> there were about 30 patch cables involved. It worked just fine and I
> had no problem browsing the network through that mess. I guess that
> means you can daisy chain at least 32 ethernet switches.
>
> --
> Jeff Liebermann je...@cruzio.com
> 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
> Santa Cruz CA 95060http://802.11junk.com
> Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Thanks for that! I didn't even consider a used switch, I will look
into it though.
Unfortunately the FS524 does not have PoE. I'm going to set up cameras
that use this, so that I don't need to run power cables up to them.