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Sorry for what is probably the most basic question in regards to networking - but I've been finding a lot of contradicting advice both online and from colleagues. I've just moved into my new house and am in the process of setting up a new network throughout the building. I don't have the luxury of ripping up floors or chasing walls, so it's basically attic/loft and running cables outside the property so didn't want to run a drop to each and every device from one large switch. The question I have is how to setup the network structure by using multiple switches. It's nothing fancy, I have my fibre broadband in the study and have attached that to a Netgear GS108 - 8 Port Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000) Unmanaged Network Switch. From this switch I've plugged my main computer, printer, NAS drive. I now have three other rooms of the property I want to connect. Previous house, I just took a single CAT6 cable from port 6, 7 & 8 and ran one to each room and connected a Netgear GS105 - 8 Port Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000) Unmanaged Network Switch which then had my TV, Xbox, media server etc attached to it or a PC/printer etc in their respective rooms. Basically 'branching' out from the first switch attached to the router.

usual setup

It's usually worked fine, I do get the odd time I need to reboot a machine because I can't access the NAS, but mostly it's pretty stable. However, I've been told I should daisy chain the switches to look like this:

daisychain

I've found a lot of conflicting advice on this one, basically if one switch dies the rest of the 'chain' has effectively been lost to the network. But my thoughts on that one is that it's connected the other end, so the other switches can still communicate, just obviously any devices connected to this switch are dead.

The last variation someone has told me is that I need to run two cables to each unmanaged switch. What that does, I have no clue. I can't imagine the switch is going to use one for inbound and the other for outbound data - but I may well be wrong.

Any advice on the best way to setup this simple home network would be really appreciative - I'm competent enough to plug it all in, but networking and infrastructure is not my strong point! Naturally, I'd like to get the best performance/setup possible - so if something totally different is suggested, I'm not adverse to buying new equipment.

Thanks,

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  • Loops at layer-2 are generally to be avoided unless the switches support the (Rapid) Spanning Tree Protocol.
    – sblair
    Feb 19, 2016 at 8:57

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With unmanaged switches it's best to go for the first (hub-spoke) setup. This is because in the second setup you can get loops in the network, which effectively kill all connectivity.

In enterprise networks, rings setups are used for the exact reasons you state above, but you need something to prevent loops. This is managed by the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) which is usually not available on unmanaged switches. STP in the second setup would make one of the links in the ring unusable, effectively creating a hub-spoke setup. When a link in the ring fails, it would detect the failure and reactivate the previously disabled link, creating another hub-spoke setup which is not affected by the broken link.

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  • Thanks mtak. I'll go with the hub spoke setup. Should I just run the one cable to each switch, or two (or more) as someone else suggested?
    – JayDee
    Feb 19, 2016 at 9:32
  • No you should only run a single cable, otherwise you end up with a ring structure (again) and get loops. If you want to run multiple cables between each switch, you should use STP (or LACP).
    – mtak
    Feb 19, 2016 at 11:59

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