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adding a switch to a router & cable modem setup

B

boggsie

Platinum Member
I have my ISP supplied cable modem. The LAN outlet on the cable modem connects to the WAN port on my SMC router.
I connect my computer to the SMC router LAN outlet. All is good!!!

Insert another computer and the need for a switch, so I buy a DSS-8+ [dlink].

On this switch is a single Uplink port and eight separate LAN ports.

My instinct tells me that I sould connect the outlet from the SMC router to the Uplink on the Dlink switch.

The documentation describes the Uplink jack as: "Use this jack to connect stations to the hub. This is an MDI-II jack, which means you can connect the hub to a device with an MDI-X port, using an ordinary straight-through cable, making a crossover cable unnecessary.

I'm going to give it a shot. While I am offline and tangled in wires, any comments are appreciated.
 
Why do you need a switch? I thought the SMC was a switch? I have one myself and I do not always use a switch. Their is no need, but of course they are so cheap that you might as well.

If it does not work in the uplink port, plug it into a regular port 😉

Uplink is nothing special as the name might imply. Its just a reversed logic port. It doees the same thing as a cross over cable. It just has certain wires reversed, but it does NOT have any additional functionality whatsoever.
 
I assume that his SMC router is a model with only one LAN port on it.

The router should indeed be connected to the uplink port on the switch. The uplink port is built to be the same pinout as a computer's NIC port.

Consider when you connect a NIC to a regular switch port, the send/receive wires have to be reversed on each end, so send goes to receive on each side. An uplink port is the opposite of a regular port, so it matches what the NIC's port has. And since your router's LAN port is meant to connect to a NIC, the uplink port has the pinout that you need.

A hub of course would be cheaper and just as useful, given the speed of a cable connection in comparison.
 
Thanks to all ... up and running, nicely! I appreciate the help. I found out that the cable I was trying to use in the uplink port was a crossover cable. It would work in the standard LAN ports, but not in the uplink. Swapped in a straight through cable and it worked like a charm.

Although, it seems that when you use the uplink port, the LAN port #1 becomes unusable. I'm going to check with dlink to make certain that this is expected behavior.

Thanks again to all!
 
For most switches, yes, port 1 is shared with the uplink port (because the controller doesn't care that the port is crossed, so they use the same electronics internally).

You could have also left the crossover cable in place on the standard port, and it would have worked exactly the same.
 
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