[muglo] Re: Networking switch for a wired house (CAT5e cable)

Hi all, Christian Dupuis kindly e-mailed me this response. He was
having problems posting to the list so I thought I'd throw it out
there for anyone else who's contemplating their own house-wide wired
network.

Eric.

Christian Dupuis
On Dec 12, 2005, at 3:30 PM, Mac Canada wrote:

Hello all, a friend of mine has just wired up their house with CAT 5e cabli=
ng.

I'm trying to find out what is a good switch to handle 8 or 16 cables?
(I gave the electrician instructions to set up 8 lines in the house...
(one is unused at the moment) and I've left room for growth).

Cisco? 3COM? DLINK? LINKSYS? NetGear?

This is a house through which 5 megabit ADSL service is going to be
distributed between ~5-6 users. GigaBit ethernet future proofing would
be nice, but is certainly not necessary!!!

Eric.

I have a similar setup. There's a Gnet gigabit switch in the basement
that provides 8 gig ports (ports used for computers +1 for uplink to
the second floor); it services a standalone firewall (Monowall,
running on a small PC) and four servers (my main Linux server, a G4
cube running Panther server, a second Linux server and a NAS server).
I've run a cat5e run to the second floor, where I have a Cisco/Linksys
16 port switch feeding a print server (for my non-USB HP laser), my
Airport Extreme Base Station, my G5 and a PC. Both switches cost me,
oh about $225 + tax altogether.

  I'll probably end up replacing the Linksys with a small 3-COM
managed switch (Intellijack NJ220, see
http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab=3Dfeatures&pathtype=3Dpur=
chase&sku=3DWEBBNCNJ220SYS
), and the unmanaged Gnet downstairs to either a small 8 port managed
3-Com switch. As far as your situation goes, if the wiring's all
through, a single switch will work perfectly.

It's mostly a question of budget; a managed 24 port switch (ideally,
something with some kind of web front-end for management) will set you
back around $500 to $700, but you can get a decent unmanaged switch in
the $300-$350 range. I like managed, in case you get something with a
fussy network card; it's nice to be able to "tweak" a port's speed and
duplex to work efficiently with whatever it is you plug in it.

I had great success at a client's  (a communication firm, 12 designers
and photographers using G4s, G5s and Powerbooks) with a Netgear
FS-526T managed switch; they used to run a cascade of Linksys switches
with no ends of problems; now, with the single managed switch,
performance is much better and no hiccups. It's been discontinued, but
there's a nice ProSafe model that replaced it; it's a 16 port, managed
gigabit switch, you can read about it here:
http://www.netgear.com/products/details/GS716T.php

Enjoy the network! ;-)

Chris

Christian Dupuis

Technophile

d1user@xxxxxxx

http://www.digitalphotomac.com
_________________________________________________

For information concerning the MUGLO List just click on

           http://muglo.on.ca/Pages/joinus.html

Our Archives can be viewed at 

         http://www.freelists.org/archives/muglo

Don't forget to periodically check our web site at:

                 http://muglo.on.ca/

Other related posts: