Performance difference between one large switch versus multiple smaller switches?

[nitsuj3580]

My current house has single RJ45 drops in a few rooms that go into a network closet which I just plug into the back of my FIOS router in the same closet. In each of the rooms, I currently have an unmanaged gigabit switch to give me more ports for that room.

Would I see any performance difference (intranet file transfers would only have to go through one switch versus two, for example) if I were to take the time to run more cable so I have more drops in each room all going into a patch patch panel which is then connected to a larger (e.g. 24 ports) switch? I figure I would save on electricity, haha, but more interested in if its worth the time and effort to run a bunch of wires.

Thanks

 

[Genx87]

You wont see much of a difference imo. But I would still do it just because it is cleaner.

 

[HutchinsonJC]

Assuming your main drop point to the house is hooked to a gigabit switch and then the switches you put in each room are also gigabit, it's highly unlikely (as a typical/average user) that you'll notice much of a difference compared to running multiple Cat5e to each room from the main switch.

An example where you might notice:

You've got a Machine A, B, C in Room X with a gigabit switch
You've got a Machine D, E, F in Room Y with a gigabit switch

Both Room X and Y's switches tie into a main switch in your closet over Cat5e

If you're doing heavy file transfers from Machine A in Room X to Machine D in Room Y and that's the only activity going on, you'll pretty much have full gigabit access with no perceptible slow down of any kind for that traffic to go from one room to the other hopping across all 3 switches.

But let's add that Machine C is doing heavy file transfer to Machine E at the same time. Now the switch in Room X is trying to accommodate Machine A and C's traffic to the closet over that single piece of Cat5e. Effectively splitting what machine A and C get access to of that gigabit connection... so half the connection for those two machines. A similar effect happens in Room Y where Machine's D and E are sharing the same Cat5e line to the closet from Room Y.

The net result is that it's possible you cut your bandwidth in half or in thirds branching out to more switches like that.

Most switches today are able to handle their full gigabit rating on each port independent of what any of the other ports on the switch are doing. So plugging every machine into the same switch would be ideal for really heavy network traffic instead of branching down to other switches.

Most home users aren't doing this kind of network use on any kind of regular basis that it would much matter. So a switch in each room should be more than fine if that's how you want to handle it.

If your use-case is pretty network intensive, I'd just run Cat5e drops to each machine from the main switch *if* you're wanting to optimize the speeds of that traffic flow.

 

[JackMDS]

If the switches are Good switches that provide real Giga capacity and the CAT cables are good commercial made, you will Not see any Difference.

That said, some Giga Switches do not provide Real Giga traffic and some CAT cables can have loose ends.

1. What the story of the Giga? Most users are Not aware that the Manufacturers of End Users Network devices Rate all of their devices according to the Chipset Specs, Not according to the real overall capacity of the Device that includes the rest of circuits and components around the Chipset.

Even Ventilation inefficiency of the Devices' boxes can reduce performance.

It is mostly a travesty in Wireless, almost None of the devices are capable to provide the Speed of the core chipset, similarly Routers Swicthes and the like are "infected" with the same "marketing disease".

Check individually the switches and the cables,if some are producing lower than a decent work rating, replace them

 

[VirtualLarry]

While I don't disagree with Jack, I will add, that for the smaller switches, most all of them these days can handle full switching rate for all ports, for 5, 8 and maybe 16-port switches. Any name-brand switch, that is.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Agreed with all replies. I will add that I prefer to use iperf to test a path from point a to to point b.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

1) If multiple clients connected to switch A are accessing multiple clients on switch B at the same time, there will be some congestion on the A<->B link.

2) With a sufficiently large number of switches and clients, you could theoretically have a performance bottleneck due to the CPU in a cheap switch not being able to keep up.

3) For residential use, you are unlikely to experience any kind of noticeable performance degradation.

I'm surprised there aren't consumer oriented switches with 5GbE uplink ports yet. That would avoid #1.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm surprised there aren't consumer oriented switches with 5GbE uplink ports yet. That would avoid #1.

You could buy some cheap(er) "managed switches", and set up a Teaming / LAGG port (ports), and run 2GbE (2x1GbE) between switches. That can help. It's really a question of how much you want to spend, which for consumer networking gear, is generally "not much" or "as little as possible".

To be sure, though, a gigabit LAN throughout is basically nearly a necessity these days.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

You could buy some cheap(er) "managed switches", and set up a Teaming / LAGG port (ports), and run 2GbE (2x1GbE) between switches. That can help. It's really a question of how much you want to spend, which for consumer networking gear, is generally "not much" or "as little as possible".

To be sure, though, a gigabit LAN throughout is basically nearly a necessity these days.

I thought about mentioning that. Yes, you can do LAGG, and even cheap switches often support it. But it's generally only practical in a rack - in a house it's tougher. (Why run 4 drops to every room to plug in two devices? Might as well just get a bigger core switch and do one drop per device.)

I wouldn't say Gigabit is a necessity - based on the transfer rates I see over wifi and the general availability (or lack thereof) of high speed internet connections, 200-300Mb connections are all most users really need. (About what you'd get from a USB2 Ethernet adapter, incidentally.) But the next step down from 1GbE is 100MbE, so Gb wins by default.