Adding a switch to a N750

[shd542821a]

Hi,
I currently have a Netgear N750 (WNDR4000) router with 4 hard-wired ethernet connections (in addition of course to the wireless connections). Would it make any difference in my network speed if I added a Cisco SG200-08 8-port Gigabit Smart Switch (SLM2008T-NA) to the setup so that I had:

ROUTER => one ethernet cable to cisco switch => all devices connect to cisco switch directly instead of to router

Thanks in advance for any advice!

-R

 

[Fardringle]

The Netgear has four gigabit ethernet ports. Unless something is physically wrong with those ports, then you aren't likely to get any more speed out of a separate consumer grade gigabit switch. Unless you need more than 4 wired connections, I wouldn't waste $100 on a switch that you don't need...

 

[shd542821a]

Ok but if I need to add two more wired ports, would that switch make sense? Thank you!
R

 

[Eeqmcsq]

If you need more ethernet ports, that would be the right idea. But I wouldn't spend $100 for a switch unless I'm sure I needed the advanced networking features.

Can you describe what your network usage is? Is this for home use or for business use? How many devices and how much traffic are you expecting to send over the network?

 

[JackMDS]

This might be what you need.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833156250

 

[shd542821a]

If you need more ethernet ports, that would be the right idea. But I wouldn't spend $100 for a switch unless I'm sure I needed the advanced networking features.

Can you describe what your network usage is? Is this for home use or for business use? How many devices and how much traffic are you expecting to send over the network?

Yes. SOHO business. 4-5 hard wired machines at one time. No video. 2-3 wireless at the same time. Old setup had an old trusty linksys wrt54g doubling as a switch (with DHCP off of course) but it started to get old.

I only picked the CISCO because I though that the managed switch from what I've read would prioritize bandwith. There are two machines that have hard-core use and the other two are in bursts. It was my (possibly wrong) understanding that an unmanaged switch would send everyone the same bandwidth, whereas the managed switch would "see" that computers A and C need more of the bandwidth than computers B and D and allocate resources appropriately.

 

[shd542821a]

Does this switch (the SG200) need any type of special security configuration? I.e does it put the network at risk in any way? I can't imagine that it would since it's behind the router/firewall, but I just wanted to sure. I didn't know if "managed" add a layer of security risk vs. a non-managed switch.

Thanks for everyone's continued help!

 

[lif_andi]

I have that exact switch, and frankly I've not had the need to manage it aside from the basic setup. However, I do intend to change its configuration and this switch does offer a wealth of configuration options, such as VLANs and QoS. Like it very much.

Unconfigured I'm almost sure it works the same as an unmanaged switch, but configured with knowledge and you might gain a little something.