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We have to extend our home network. Presently we use one Gigabit D-Link 16-port switch. Our idea is to extend by another switch (same model). My question is: Connect each switch separately to the router (it has 4 ports, 100M only) or connect just one switch to the router and one connection between both switches? As there are some NAS and media servers in the network, I think option 2 is the best choice.

3 Answers 3

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There are 2 cases:

  • 1 - if the switches were 100Mbit, like the router, both switches should of been connected to the router, because otherwise the link between Router and 1st Switch would become saturated.

  • 2 - your current case - since the switches are 1GBit, connect the second SW to the 1st SW so at least you get the gigabit speed benefit between the LAN devices connected in them.

My general advice is to get a gigabit router and then use case 1.

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  • Regarding your general advise. If both switches are connected to the router, then the router has to do the traffic between the switches. I'm not sure, if the routers ports are switched ports or just a hub. In second case would create more collisions. Nov 17, 2017 at 13:16
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    Option 3- Connect switches to each other and also each one to the router. This shoudl keep device to device traffic on the gig side, and either group of devices has a path to the router for DHCP adn Internet access
    – ivanivan
    Nov 17, 2017 at 13:22
  • I am not sure, if this is a good idea. Because every device then has 2 ways to connect to the Internet. And most likely can get 2 DHCP addresses assigned. Are there any network specialists around who can judge this Option 3? Nov 17, 2017 at 14:32
  • That option works if you switches/router are redundancy/multi-path aware. otherwise, you can end up with a big loop.
    – Overmind
    Nov 20, 2017 at 9:00
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Connect both switches to the router. That will allow you to share bandwidth between them better.

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    I'd disagree; if the router only has a 100M switch built in, and both external ones are 1G, then following your suggestion and putting the 100M ports "in the middle" would be a major bottleneck. Nov 17, 2017 at 11:40
  • That my concerns, too. Big files from / to NAS or mediaserver have to pass the bottleneck and slow down the traffic. Nov 17, 2017 at 11:47
  • c/p my comment from teh other answer - connect both switches to each other AND to the router - device to device will use gig, device to internet will use 100mb and not have to fight whatever traffic is going through the other switch
    – ivanivan
    Nov 17, 2017 at 13:23
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Whether it's better to connect both switches directly to the router or to each other depends on your workload and on the speed of the router ports. In your case I would connect the switches to each other and one of them to the router.

If there's a lot of internal traffic and the router ports are slower (e.g. 100 Mbit/s) than the switch ports (e.g. 1 Gbit/s) it's best to chain the switches. This enables the faster speed across the switches.

If there's little internal traffic, the Internet uplink is very fast (>100 Mbit/s) or the router ports are as fast as the switch ports it's best to connect both switches to the router. This removes the potential switch-to-switch bottleneck.

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  • This matches with my understanding. The Internet-uplink is moderate fast, about 5Mbps, but internally is a lot of traffic when streaming media from the media-server or copying files to the NAS. Nov 21, 2017 at 11:36

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