LAN Configuration help

[hldr]

Looking for advise on the most efficent setup of my home network. I recently bought the netgear 3700 and it has been great. I also have a trendnet green 8 port giga switch. Both of these will be located in my equipment closet.

I also have an ooma voip hub. before i did the router upgrade i had modem>ooma hub>router. Mainly had it that way since the previous router was a wrg614 and i thought the hub probably had better qos routing. I now have the 3700 infront since i think it does that. I need to learn how to setup the qos though. Problem is that having the hub after the router loses one of my 11 ports (i have pleanty now).

Will speed through the switch be as fast as straight from the router? should my netflix devices connect directly to the router or does any of this matter?

What I have to connect:

Wired:

OOMA VOIP hub --- located in equip closet with router and switch
Desktop Computer --- My main rig
Sony 460 bluray (netflix streaming bedroom)
Sony 570 bluray (netflix living room)
Directv HD DVR living room
Directv HD DVR bedroom

Wireless:

iphone
iphone
laptop
laptop
network printer
wii

Near future might add NAS and a ipad.

Thanks for your help and advise.

 

[PTNL]

ISP --- Netgear 3700 --- Trendnet Switch --- Wired devices (consoles, pc, ooma, dvr, etc.)
                  |
                   \
                      --- Wireless devices (iphone, laptop, wii, etc.)

Put the NAS on the Trendnet switch. May even consider upgrading the Trendnet 8-port to a Netgear Prosafe 16-port GbE switch.

Edit: If you don't mind dropping another $100-150 and want to get some overkill, then buy a second 3700. The uplink 3700 router would have wireless turned off and DHCP turned on; the second 3700 would have a static LAN IP (outside the DHCP lease range), and would attach to the Trendnet switch as a plain access point.

 

[hldr]

so everything plugged into the switch and only the switch plugged into the router? i was thinking having my most demanding devices on the router might be better. IDK

 

[a little off]

so everything plugged into the switch and only the switch plugged into the router? i was thinking having my most demanding devices on the router might be better. IDK

Don't take this the wrong way, but you don't have any "demanding" devices. Nothing you have is really going to overpower that switch. Get two servers in with RAID'ed SAS arrays then we can talk.

And I do mostly agree with PTNL, use the switch to plug everything in, let QOS be handled on the router. You are not going to have to deal with QOS if you are transferring files from Desktop to Laptop and watching a Netflix movie, but you may have issues if someone is watching a Netflix movie and downloading an Linux ISO.

Your Internet connection is going to be your weakest link, so the only change from PTNL's suggestion is plug in the VOIP box directly into the NetGear. For two reasons, QOS and if in the future you do have any form of swtich issue, it doesn't affect your phones, or if the switch fails your phone still works.

 

[webdes03]

If you're worried about latency over wireless devices then you could put the NAS on the 3700 as it's one less hop for a wireless device, but I honestly wouldn't be concerned with it, the additional hop should be negligible.

You shouldn't have any issues with your Bluray devices, everything is gigabit so there should be plenty of bandwidth. The only place you may have issues is with your WAN, depending on how big your pipe is. Once you get QOS set up for your phones, you should be able to add the Bluray device IPs to your QOS to give priority traffic to them if you see any issues.

Edit: And, a_little_off makes a good point about your VOIP system being attached directly to your router.

 

[a little off]

May even consider upgrading the Trendnet 8-port to a Netgear Prosafe 16-port GbE switch.

I actually wouldn't do this.

Instead I would get a a cheap 4 or 8 port Gig switch for either the living room and/or the bedroom. None of the wired devices he has have Gig interfaces, and even if they do, it's overkill for the device. However it would allow him to save some of his wireless bandwidth if he gets an Apple TV/X-Box/PS3/Etc. He can just plug them all into the local switch and not have to run extra cable.

That was he is taking up two ports on the Netgear (Main Swtich and VIOP), the living room drop handles all Ethernet in the living room, and the bedroom drop handles all Ethernet there. Good way to extend wireless if you need that also.Just make sure you run Cat5e between the switches for a bit of future proofing.

 

[hldr]

Fortunately i have alot of cable in this house. we built a couple of years ago and put cat5e and cat6 to every tv drop. my office has 2 cat6 and the main tv location has an extra cat6 (cat5e + 2 cat6). we may have overkilled i guess. i got that switch in december when they were @ amazon for ~20$.

Thanks for all the help and no - im not offended that i dont have anything demanding. lol.

 

[PTNL]

I actually wouldn't do this.

Instead I would get a a cheap 4 or 8 port Gig switch for either the living room and/or the bedroom. None of the wired devices he has have Gig interfaces, and even if they do, it's overkill for the device. However it would allow him to save some of his wireless bandwidth if he gets an Apple TV/X-Box/PS3/Etc. He can just plug them all into the local switch and not have to run extra cable.

That was he is taking up two ports on the Netgear (Main Swtich and VIOP), the living room drop handles all Ethernet in the living room, and the bedroom drop handles all Ethernet there. Good way to extend wireless if you need that also.Just make sure you run Cat5e between the switches for a bit of future proofing.

You're welcome to disagree.

The PC, and likely the future NAS, would have GbE. GbE would not be overkill considering multiple large streams of data from a future NAS.

Swapping out the switches was suggested after looking at the number of devices already being attached. A NAS as listed in my configuration (not with better suggestion of plugging the ooma into the 3700) would bring the total number of devices to seven. The uplink cable would max-out the number of devices on the Trendnet. The 16-port was suggested as future proofing... plus expansion, in case a run needs to go to another part of the house and use the 8-port switch there.