Router/Switch?

[triplep]

I have a quick question, I am a little confused, what is the difference between a Router and a switch??

Basically what I am trying to do is hook up our wired networks in the house... current set up is two routers with 1 router feeding into the second router... this doesn't seem to be working to well...?

I am just wondering if it would be easier to wire my shaw cable into a 8 port splitter? and then run a wireless of one of the ports?

I was looking at something like this....

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX2011


but I am confused as to what the 8 port 10/100 switch is?! Will this only allow certain connections to work at a certain time? Or can I have 8 different connections working at the same time?

Thanks.

[Vdubbin]

Generally you would run it like this

Shaw Modem
|
Router
|
Switch


The router will filter some traffic and provide somewhat of a firewall while a home switch basicly just splits the signal. It does do a little routing on it's own but it's more of a dumb device.
You would generally run a switch or 2 behind a router when you need to hook up a bunch of connections to a single router.

Does this make sense?

The "switch" you provided for in the link is actually a router. For a basic switch you would use something like this.

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX1657

If you wanted to go with that one you could plug that directly into your shaw modem and then run one of these behind it to give you wireless access.

Wireless Access Point (http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX8562)

[dr_jared88]

Technical terms a router is layer 3, a switch is layer 2.

Basically what you should have though is 1 router, and if you need to expand the the number of ports that the built in switch within the router has, you should use a switch.

So if you already have a router, get a switch and use that instead of another router.

[Mibz]

Without knowing what your problem is, I'm going to go ahead and guess that you're using the WAN port on R2. Have the link between R1 and R2 use LAN ports on both devices.

If that's not it, maybe you could just tell us what the problem is, just in case you don't have to buy anything else.

[triplep]

thanks for the info, I will look into what was said above.



Originally posted by Mibz
Without knowing what your problem is, I'm going to go ahead and guess that you're using the WAN port on R2. Have the link between R1 and R2 use LAN ports on both devices.

If that's not it, maybe you could just tell us what the problem is, just in case you don't have to buy anything else.

Basically the way I have it set up is:

Shaw box ---> router 1 with wireless ---> router 2 (wireless turned off)

I took one of the connections from router 1 and plugged it into router 2 where I would have typically hooked up the shaw box.

The problem is that I don't have connectivity on router 2 all the time, so I am just trying to fix that.

Also, I have more then 7 cat5e cables that I would like to connect just so everything would be hooked up and I don't have to worry about the rest.. hence why I thought if I got a switch I could hook up 10 total and just leave it at that.

[Mibz]

If there aren't enough ports between the two to handle everything you need then, yeah, go ahead and buy a switch.

If you need both working in the meantime, move that plug from the WAN port (Usually labeled "WAN" and separated from the other ports) on R2 into one of the regular ports (Usually numbered 1-4 and bunched together). Don't plug anything into that WAN port. Things should work fine from there.

[eblend]

Whate everyone already said, should just run another switch. Even if you run the second router through the lan port, you would end up with two DHCP servers, which could cause a hell of confusing on your network.

Router is a layer 3 device and uses IPs to route traffic. For example, your home network may be 192.168.1.* but the site you are trying to access on the net is 154.*.*.* for example, because they are on different networks, the router has to route that information from one to the other. Anytime you go from one network to the other you have to route. Router is a smart device in that sense and uses a routing table to determine which way it should route the traffic, think of it as a traffic cop.

A switch is a dumb device and uses MAC addresses burned into your physical network adapters. Switch is used to just basically move traffic on the same network, creating separate "collision domains", so for example, if you have a 4 port switch, and a computer in port 2 and computer in port 3 are talking to each other with alot of traffic, all of the traffic will just go between those two ports, without having to be routed anywhere else, like back to your router.

A home router will have a router + a few port switch built in. The router function will route the info from your internal network to the outside world, whereas the swith portion will switch the traffic within your home network. If you want to expand the number of ports on the back of a router, just add an additional switch. so you could have something like this:


modem > router >switch

so if your router has 4 built in ports, you could utilize 3 ports for some devices, use the 4th port for anothe switch (say 8 port for example), and than you would get an additional 7 ports out of this configuration (8 - 1 that is used on the switch side to connect to port 4 on the router)

You could also add additional switches to port 1, 2 or 3 on the router to expand it even more, or you could throw another switch behind the switch you already setup in the example earlier. If you add additional switches to ports 1, 2 or 3 for example, make sure you never have a cable going from a switch on port 4 to a switch on port 1, 2 or 3, otherwise you would create a loop and bring down your network.

I don't know if any of this helps or not, but what you have, you are possible creating a double NAT or have multiple DHCP servers on the same IP, so if both routers are 192.168.1.1, than your computer will get confused on which one it is hitting at any one time, causing your network to be all fucked up and unreliable.

[Mibz]

Seems strange to tell him to buy a switch because otherwise he would have to make a single config change on the router, then proceed to throw down a wall of nerd text.

You're right though, DHCP would have to be disabled on R2, I should have mentioned that.

[triplep]

Alright, I think I understand where my mistake was, I will try the one route first by disabling the DHCP settings.. as I know 100% I did not do this. And for the time being it should work fine.

I will also go ahead and by a switch so that I can hook everything up and be done with it. 50$ isn't much and if I can get everything to work that will be great.

Thanks for everyones help!

[BrknFngrs]

On a similar note, if you have:

Modem --> Wireless Router --> Switch

And you have one computer connected wirelessly to the router and other computers hardwired to the switch, is there anyway for the hardwired computers to connect to a share on the computer using wireless? Or vice versa?

[Recca168]

Originally posted by BrknFngrs
On a similar note, if you have:

Modem --> Wireless Router --> Switch

And you have one computer connected wirelessly to the router and other computers hardwired to the switch, is there anyway for the hardwired computers to connect to a share on the computer using wireless? Or vice versa?

It should just work as if everything was connected to your router. The switch is basically just expanding the number of LAN connections to the router

[eblend]

Originally posted by Recca168


It should just work as if everything was connected to your router. The switch is basically just expanding the number of LAN connections to the router

what he said. that is the idea. all the devices would be on the same network, as the wireless on the router is like an access point for the same network on the swith portion of the router, and since a switch is used, there is no routing taking place, therefore same network.


@Mibz, yah its a wall of nerd text, but if I had no clue wtf i was doing, I would like to get a better understanding in semi simple words, rathen than just be told to get a switch. This way hopefully the OP has a better understanding in basic networking. Yes he can change settings on the router and connect it on the LAN side ect, but I guess I just like the simplicity of using a switch instead, they are cheap and than you don't have a second router setup in a way where it is only switching, seems like a waste of a good router, and having to configure stuff, where a switch normally has no config at all, just plug it in. I am all about efficiency haha

[speedog]

Just went through this in our house, had the TELUS 4 port modem/router and another 4 port router after that. Getting computers to talk to each other was becoming a PITA, went out and got a 24 port switch and all is good now with all devices on the switch. Computers can all see each other and all of them talk very nicely to our network connected printer - would have never expected to have had 9 connected devices at home with probably more to come.

[Mibz]

Originally posted by eblend
@Mibz, yah its a wall of nerd text, but if I had no clue wtf i was doing, I would like to get a better understanding in semi simple words, rathen than just be told to get a switch. This way hopefully the OP has a better understanding in basic networking. Yes he can change settings on the router and connect it on the LAN side ect, but I guess I just like the simplicity of using a switch instead, they are cheap and than you don't have a second router setup in a way where it is only switching, seems like a waste of a good router, and having to configure stuff, where a switch normally has no config at all, just plug it in. I am all about efficiency haha No argument here. I'm all about cheap ;)

[triplep]

Okay after looking over everything, I went ahead and just bought a new router and 8 port switch.

Now I know I did not have to buy a new router.... however, after realizing that the router was over 8 years old and just plain old G, I thought it was time anyways to upgrade the router. So I bought a new one!

Now I do have a new question about the new router.

It is a Dlink Xtreme Dual N band router 2.4/5 gigz

I am wondering, I have set it up for both networks, and given each network its own unique name however I am having problems connecting the the 5g part of the router on some of the computers at home.

I have a mac myself, and I can connect to either or which is fine for me, however, when I try to run my moms laptop (1.5 years old) it will only pick up the 2.4g network. Is this because her wireless card is not ment for N? I would have thought that N has been out for a while?

I would really like to hook her up to the 5g network since she does a lot of tv show streaming of websites etc.

[eblend]

Originally posted by triplep
Okay after looking over everything, I went ahead and just bought a new router and 8 port switch.

Now I know I did not have to buy a new router.... however, after realizing that the router was over 8 years old and just plain old G, I thought it was time anyways to upgrade the router. So I bought a new one!

Now I do have a new question about the new router.

It is a Dlink Xtreme Dual N band router 2.4/5 gigz

I am wondering, I have set it up for both networks, and given each network its own unique name however I am having problems connecting the the 5g part of the router on some of the computers at home.

I have a mac myself, and I can connect to either or which is fine for me, however, when I try to run my moms laptop (1.5 years old) it will only pick up the 2.4g network. Is this because her wireless card is not ment for N? I would have thought that N has been out for a while?

I would really like to hook her up to the 5g network since she does a lot of tv show streaming of websites etc.

Your mother's laptop is no compatible with the 5ghz band. N uses both 2.4ghz and 5ghz, some older devices just may not be compatible with the 5ghz portion of it.

Really, you are not going to see much difference going to 5ghz vs 2.4. If she does alot of streaming, best you can do is to isolate her to her own network, and use the 5ghz for yourself. This way, she can be hammering one band, while the other is available for normal use.

Streaming online doesn't use that much bandwidth, wireless G would have handled it fine as is. Make sure you configure your N correctly thought, go all out N only if you want to see the advertised speeds, and don't do mixed mode. Also use wpa2 + aes for encryption.

Going all N and no mixed mode however means that there may be even more old devices which may be incompatible, some are even incompatible with wpa2