• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

Router

Tovis

New Member
If a router has 8 ports and wifi, can it handle about 18 connections between wired and wifi or is it best to have only as many computers as ports hooked up to the router.

We are having some issues with email and the network running slow. I am going to daisy chain a gigabit switch into the network but am waiting for the crossover cables to come in the mail.

Router = DIR-632
 

oldgoatroper

Roper of Goats. Old ones.
Most routers technically have the capability to handle up to 255 connections (less the WAN connection and its own IP -- which would be 253). Practically, it would all depend on the amount of traffic.

So, you're connecting a switch into your router? Why do you need a crossover cable for that? It should be just a straight ethernet cable.
 

njshorts

New Member
If a router has 8 ports and wifi, can it handle about 18 connections between wired and wifi or is it best to have only as many computers as ports hooked up to the router.

We are having some issues with email and the network running slow. I am going to daisy chain a gigabit switch into the network but am waiting for the crossover cables to come in the mail.

Router = DIR-632

depends on the router... dlink/netgear/linksys soho products are notorious for not being able to handle traffic as advertised.

if you're adding a switch, you don't need a crossover cable- use a standard rj-45.

if you're looking for performance, look into upgrading your router. we hit a wall with our linksys wrt54g, even with dd-wrt firmware... we now use a smoothwall (opensource firewall) on an old piece of hardware (single core amd 3400+ w/2gb ram) and an apple airport extreme as a WAP.
 

signswi

New Member
OP's model doesn't support dd-wrt which is too bad.

I wouldn't worry too much, drop your switch behind it, plug everything into the switch, with only one uplink into the router and you'll likely be completely fine. Intranet traffic will hardly touch the router and it's relatively tough to overwhelm even a low-end consumer router with internet traffic unless you're bit torrenting with a few hundred connections active. If you really want to cut down on router/switch overhead you could assign all internal IPs to be static and put the correlating name/ip info into a hosts file and put that hosts file on each internal computer. That way they don't even need to do name/ip lookups for internal traffic.

If you do want to upgrade to small business metal instead of consumer, check out: http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/Ci...wireless-router-802.11b-g-n-draf/1505609.aspx or build your own if you have the tech inclination. Just know that when it eventually goes down you're on the line personally to fix it and quick, while your business stalls...
 

Tovis

New Member
I've read in order to connect 2 switches a crossover is needed, so you are telling me this isn't true?
 

oldgoatroper

Roper of Goats. Old ones.
I've read in order to connect 2 switches a crossover is needed, so you are telling me this isn't true?
Not true.

I think crossovers are only good for connecting two computers directly to each other via ethernet ports. Might also have been necessary to connect two hubs (not switches or routers)


Internet Modem
|
Router with Wireless -- a few wireless devices connected
|
Big Switch -- many computers and printers connected
|
Small Remote Switch in back room -- a couple computers and a printer


All connected with just straight ethernet cables -- everything can "see" everything else just fine...
 

Tovis

New Member
Not true.

I think crossovers are only good for connecting two computers directly to each other via ethernet ports. Might also have been necessary to connect two hubs (not switches or routers)


Internet Modem
|
Router with Wireless -- a few wireless devices connected
|
Big Switch -- many computers and printers connected
|
Small Remote Switch in back room -- a couple computers and a printer


All connected with just straight ethernet cables -- everything can "see" everything else just fine...

We actually have a 4 port gateway/router from comcast.

How they had it configured here is the gateway plugs into the internet port of the 8 port/wireless router and both assign ip addresses.

What I want to do is let the gateway assign ip addresses, hook the wireless router into port 1 of the gateway and let that just do all of the wireless networking (like a wireless switch). Then I want to put our 8 port gigabit switch on port 2 of the gateway and connect all the wired computers up to that and assign them all static ip addresses.

Would this be a good idea, and you say I can/should do this without crossover cables?
 

oldgoatroper

Roper of Goats. Old ones.
We actually have a 4 port gateway/router from comcast.

How they had it configured here is the gateway plugs into the internet port of the 8 port/wireless router and both assign ip addresses.

What I want to do is let the gateway assign ip addresses, hook the wireless router into port 1 of the gateway and let that just do all of the wireless networking (like a wireless switch). Then I want to put our 8 port gigabit switch on port 2 of the gateway and connect all the wired computers up to that and assign them all static ip addresses.

Would this be a good idea, and you say I can/should do this without crossover cables?


Diagram, please...
 

njshorts

New Member
We actually have a 4 port gateway/router from comcast.

How they had it configured here is the gateway plugs into the internet port of the 8 port/wireless router and both assign ip addresses.

What I want to do is let the gateway assign ip addresses, hook the wireless router into port 1 of the gateway and let that just do all of the wireless networking (like a wireless switch). Then I want to put our 8 port gigabit switch on port 2 of the gateway and connect all the wired computers up to that and assign them all static ip addresses.

Would this be a good idea, and you say I can/should do this without crossover cables?

there's your problem, double-NAT.

Shut off DHCP on the comcast router, set your dlink up with your dynamic public IP, only the dlink should be handing out addresses.



also- Crossover is not needed. Switches auto-switch, crossovers are needed for connecting 2 non-switching devices.
 

Tovis

New Member
Diagram, please...

LOL (my diagram isn't showing the spaces




(port1) -----Wireless Router------all the wireless networking

GATEWAY

(port2) -----8 port gigabit switch- into port 1
port2 -computer 1
port3 -computer 2
port4 -computer 3
port5 -computer 4
port6 -computer 5
port7 -computer 6
port8 -computer 7
 

Tovis

New Member
I actually wanted to let the comcast router handle the dynamic public ip addresses and shut it off on the dlink since the comcast router is higher up on the chain.

Would that be a bad idea for some reason?

there's your problem, double-NAT.

Shut off DHCP on the comcast router, set your dlink up with your dynamic public IP, only the dlink should be handing out addresses.



also- Crossover is not needed. Switches auto-switch, crossovers are needed for connecting 2 non-switching devices.
 

choucove

New Member
If you have two router devices that all your network has to traverse through, then yes you have a double NAT which isn't always a bad thing (I've had a double NAT at a few offices without problem going through a modem/gateway and then through the wireless router) but it's not as efficient.

One of the key things to look at, if your computers are connecting together within your LAN for sharing files or accessing a server/share, is how many device hops and bandwidth does each computer have to get to the shared device. For instance, if you have a file server connected to a gigabit switch, which also has several workstations connected to the switch, then those directly connected workstations can have up to a gigabit of throughput. However, if you have some wireless workstations, they're only going to get the maximum throughput of the wireless router, such as 54 Mb/s split amongst all the currently connected devices (and that's in an ideal situation, again.)

Usually, when people are thinking of slow internet issues, really it's just the number of devices that they have on their internal network concurrently accessing a limited bandwidth coming from your internet provider. That's always the largest bottleneck in any internet-connected network. If you have sixteen devices accessing to the internet at the same time, you have to take your ISP's rated speed and subtract between 10% and 20% of that for variation in load and quality, then divide that result by the number of computers.

So, at our sign office we only have a 3 Mb/s download speed DSL line, which in reality gets about 2.8 Mb/s throughput. We have 5 users accessing the internet regularly, so each user is getting about 0.56 Mb/s of throughput.

This is the theory anyways. Of course, loads will vary as will when people are accessing information online, but there's generally a lot of transfers happening even if the user isn't aware they are sending or receiving information online. Generally, when I have customers that are having problems with slow internet like this, the results of what they're looking for is just to have a faster internet connection from their ISP, nothing in their internal network will facilitate that faster internet speed except their internet connection.

Now, of course there could always be other explanations. The first is malware, causing a lot of network traffic from certain computers. I've also seen this happen, where a virus was running on a couple computers in the network and sending and receiving massive amounts of traffic which slowed down the whole network. The other possibility could be a lot of other internal network commotion, such as broadcast storms. This is usually caused when you get multiple switches connected together or connect two switches with more than one ethernet cable.

It's not always the best solution, but for a simple network I'd recommend getting a wireless router that has at least four gigabit LAN ports. Connect one gigabit capable switch to one of the LAN ports on the wireless router, and never connect or daisy chain additional switches off of the switch itself, but instead connect additional switches directly to the back of the wireless router. This helps to eliminate broadcast storms or possible network loops because you're using a router to connect and communicate between the switches. But again be careful, if you use just any regular wireless router, its most likely not going to have a built-in gigabit switch, just a 10/100 switch which can cause a massive bottleneck if you have multiple computers trying to pass data back and forth between two switches connected to the router.
 

oldgoatroper

Roper of Goats. Old ones.
LOL (my diagram isn't showing the spaces




(port1) -----Wireless Router------all the wireless networking

GATEWAY

(port2) -----8 port gigabit switch- into port 1
port2 -computer 1
port3 -computer 2
port4 -computer 3
port5 -computer 4
port6 -computer 5
port7 -computer 6
port8 -computer 7


Sorry, this is not very clear -- please itemize what every piece of hardware IS, not what your intended use of it is... show the connections, please



Also, unnecessary to show all computers attached to a switch.
 

njshorts

New Member
I actually wanted to let the comcast router handle the dynamic public ip addresses and shut it off on the dlink since the comcast router is higher up on the chain.

Would that be a bad idea for some reason?

doesnt matter which one you choose, just use one or the other
 

signswi

New Member
I actually wanted to let the comcast router handle the dynamic public ip addresses and shut it off on the dlink since the comcast router is higher up on the chain.

Would that be a bad idea for some reason?

Comcast only gives you 1 public IP which is why you need a device doing NAT translation.

As for the crossover cable discussion -- you USED to need crossovers to uplink between two switches (or a switch and a router) but anything made in the last ten years autodetects so it isn't necessary anymore.
 

njshorts

New Member
Comcast only gives you 1 public IP which is why you need a device doing NAT translation.

As for the crossover cable discussion -- you USED to need crossovers to uplink between two switches (or a switch and a router) but anything made in the last ten years autodetects so it isn't necessary anymore.

this is correct... the hardware (10 or so years ago) were hubs... nasty little buggers.
 

signswi

New Member
I've had switches for ~15 years, hubs were more common but even 10 years ago you could buy a switch off the shelf at a big box. Wasn't auto-sensing though, they'd have a dedicated uplink that required a crossover. Then they started crossing over internally on the dedicated uplink so you could use straight...and then they added auto-sensing non-dedicated uplink anywhere and now the world is a happier place.
 

Tovis

New Member
So I tried shutting off DHCP and hooked up the wireless router (turned into a switch) and it wasn't functioning as a switch - anything else I would need to do?

I hooked it into port 1 and not the internet port
 
Top