Performance loss with multiple switches

SGRX

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I just moved into a new house and am in the process of wiring the house for ethernet. I am planning on running 2-4 drops to each area that needs them, with an HP ProCurve managed gigabit switch connected to the router in the basement.

A few areas of the house are going to need more than 4 ports, such as the living room, where I'll need a minimum of 8. I was planning on running 4 ports here and installing an 8-port switch. Is there likely to be any appreciable performance loss on a home network with this kind of setup? Primarily with regard to latency and gaming performance, as I doubt anything else would be negatively impacted enough to really notice.
 
No, of course you'll get latency but it'll be like 0.001ms so it wont matter ;-)
//Danne
 
The only time a switch will limit your performance is if you are using more bandwidth than the uplink speed. There really isn't anything (right now) that you should be putting next to the TV that will even come close to gigabit bandwidth. The device may have a gigabit port but won't be using 1000mbit.

Personally, I just ran 8 drops to a 2 gang faceplate. It's a cleaner setup and less to go wrong IMO. One less thing to plug in behind the TV.

If you go with the switch make sure you get a decent gigabit switch. HP makes a few, the Netgear GS108 is nice too (metal case, lifetime warranty).
 
Out of curiosity, what are you going to need that many ports for? I wired my last house with tons of jacks thinking I would use all of them and only ever used 4-5 of the 24.
 
Out of curiosity, what are you going to need that many ports for? I wired my last house with tons of jacks thinking I would use all of them and only ever used 4-5 of the 24.

PS3, 360, wii u, STB, TV, HTPC, Bluray, spare

Right now I've got 36 drops on my access switch, and 28 of them are lit up.
 
Better to have and not need than need and not have. If I was rewiring house today I'd drop a minimum of 4 runs to every room/area. Who knows what the kids will be hooking up and where...
 
If you're running 4 to the living room, use 3 for higher bandwidth stuff and use like a 5 port switch with the remaining drop and use that for anything relatively low bandwidth.

Still, if it's gigabit, all of that should run on one drop just fine.. but I do recommend keeping with your idea of 4+ drops, because why not?
 
Yeah, for home use you don't need to worry. It will work.

If you had a large corporate network, having a ton of systems switched like this couldcause slowdowns due to broadcast messages, but you will never reach that level in a home network.

Even on bad, cheap switches, the highest latency increase I have seen while going across one is an increase of 0.1ms, and that much is even unlikely.

So you should be just fine! Network away!

If you do a lot of high speed data transfers to a NAS, your switches support it, you have the available ports and you don't mind running extra cables, you may consider trunking (LACP, 802.3ad) multiple gigabit ports between them, to avoid the case where your NAS transfer steals all the bandwidth, slowing everyone else down, but this really shouldn't be necessary.
 
I just wanted to thank everyone for their advice. It doesn't sound like there will be any issues for me, so I will probably just stay with 4 drops in the living room, run 3 of the game systems directly and put everything else on a switch. I just picked up an HP 1800-8G that should do the trick nicely.

Out of curiosity, what are you going to need that many ports for? I wired my last house with tons of jacks thinking I would use all of them and only ever used 4-5 of the 24.

For the living room: PS3, 360, WiiU, A/V receiver, TV, HTPC, PS4 and XBOne when released. Overall I probably won't need all 24 ports on the main switch (yet), but probably at least 2/3 of them will be lit from day one.
 
For the living room: PS3, 360, WiiU, A/V receiver, TV, HTPC, PS4 and XBOne when released. Overall I probably won't need all 24 ports on the main switch (yet), but probably at least 2/3 of them will be lit from day one.

You are probably just causing yourself extra work by running all those drops.

Having done this myself in my old house, I learned the hard way that running ethernet cables in residential homes is about 100 times more of a PITA than it seems at the start of the project.

I mean, how many of those do you really ever use at the same time, and even when you do, you don't need a dedicated switch to get optimal performance. Heck, as I recall the Xbox360 only has 100Mbit support anyway...

If your switches support it, I would save yourself a lot of time, and just run two lines and triunk them, that way any large data transfers to NAS won't screw up your gaming.
 
I don't like daisy-chaining remote switches when avoidable because of troubleshooting issues. Documenting switch locations, securing them, providing back-up power, and just knowing they are there can all be issues. In a home, less of an issue, but worth considering.
 
LOL, I see the comments on "you'll never use all 24". I just added another 24 port switch to the basement as the first was filled.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039904497 said:
You are probably just causing yourself extra work by running all those drops.

Having done this myself in my old house, I learned the hard way that running ethernet cables in residential homes is about 100 times more of a PITA than it seems at the start of the project.

I mean, how many of those do you really ever use at the same time, and even when you do, you don't need a dedicated switch to get optimal performance. Heck, as I recall the Xbox360 only has 100Mbit support anyway...

If your switches support it, I would save yourself a lot of time, and just run two lines and triunk them, that way any large data transfers to NAS won't screw up your gaming.

The difference in labor between running 1 line and 4 is negligible. The difficult part is actually cutting/drilling/fishing. That's not a process you want to go through multiple times, so running extra lines up front makes way more sense. Now, if you're talking about the difference between running a cable along baseboards and actually properly running through ceiling/walls, that's another debate entirely.
 
The difference in labor between running 1 line and 4 is negligible. The difficult part is actually cutting/drilling/fishing. That's not a process you want to go through multiple times, so running extra lines up front makes way more sense. Now, if you're talking about the difference between running a cable along baseboards and actually properly running through ceiling/walls, that's another debate entirely.

Depends on if they are pulling from one pull box or multiples. Pulling 4 lines with one pull box is a pain and a lot of extra work. Pulling from multiple pull boxes for multiple lines per drop is easy, as long as holes/conduit is sized correctly.

I think 4 drops to every location in a home is ridiculous. 2 is good for most locations and 4 works for just about anywhere else. If you think you need more than 4 in a location such as by the TV, you probably need to move that stuff to a closet.
 
I just did my house, I did 4 drops in 1 box per bedroom and in the living room I did 2 drops of 4 each. Also did 4 drops to to the attic. I probably won't use that many drops at once, but I prefer to do it once and go overkill than to curse my self and not have enough some day.
All of that ends up in the basement on 1 switch and then I have another switch in my rack for the servers.
Eventually I plan to run pre-made fiber between switches and go from layer 2 to layer 3 because I'm [H] :D
 
The difference in labor between running 1 line and 4 is negligible. The difficult part is actually cutting/drilling/fishing. That's not a process you want to go through multiple times, so running extra lines up front makes way more sense. Now, if you're talking about the difference between running a cable along baseboards and actually properly running through ceiling/walls, that's another debate entirely.

Not when you have to drill through rock to run your lines, and then snake your ethernet cords through the tiny holes :p

That was the biggest pain in the ass ever. I had to keep widening the hole to get all the wires I wanted to go through, through :p

Part of the problem of running wires properly in residential buildings is the fact that residential walls have wood cross beams that occlude the wire travel path. There also typically aren't loose ceiling tiles like in office buildings.

You wind up having to drill a hole for your face place, then use a flexible 90 degree drill segment and a long as extension to drill holes in the cross beams, followed by trying to actually snake the cors through the holes you have now made, that are practically impossible to reach.

Running wires is easy when a house is built, but doing it retroactively is a royal pain in the ass, unless you just say "fuck it, I'm just opening this sucker up, then putting new boards in and repainting the room. That makes the wire part easier, but now you have a lot of other work to contend with.

Of all the home projects I have worked on, running wires was one of the most frustrating.
 
I just did my house, I did 4 drops in 1 box per bedroom and in the living room I did 2 drops of 4 each. Also did 4 drops to to the attic. I probably won't use that many drops at once, but I prefer to do it once and go overkill than to curse my self and not have enough some day.
All of that ends up in the basement on 1 switch and then I have another switch in my rack for the servers.
Eventually I plan to run pre-made fiber between switches and go from layer 2 to layer 3 because I'm [H] :D

I'm curious. What do you hope to gain from running fiber?

I have been curious about the stuff, but have yet to find any practical use for it in a home setting.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039906775 said:
Not when you have to drill through rock to run your lines, and then snake your ethernet cords through the tiny holes :p

That was the biggest pain in the ass ever. I had to keep widening the hole to get all the wires I wanted to go through, through :p

Part of the problem of running wires properly in residential buildings is the fact that residential walls have wood cross beams that occlude the wire travel path. There also typically aren't loose ceiling tiles like in office buildings.

You wind up having to drill a hole for your face place, then use a flexible 90 degree drill segment and a long as extension to drill holes in the cross beams, followed by trying to actually snake the cors through the holes you have now made, that are practically impossible to reach.

Running wires is easy when a house is built, but doing it retroactively is a royal pain in the ass, unless you just say "fuck it, I'm just opening this sucker up, then putting new boards in and repainting the room. That makes the wire part easier, but now you have a lot of other work to contend with.

Of all the home projects I have worked on, running wires was one of the most frustrating.

That being said, around here (Boston area) pretty much all houses are multi-story (so you can't just run wires in the attic), and the vast majority were built in the 60s or before. (it's actually unusual to see a house built after the 70s)

The last house I wired was a two story duplex built in the 50's. My current house was built in the 1830's to 1850's (exact date unknown due to poor recrods back then). Thus far I've just done the baseboard thing as I don't want to open that can of works, (and I also don't own the place, renting now after the divorce)

Running wires might actually be easier in houses with more modern construction techniques, that are single level with access to the walls from the attic.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039906790 said:
I'm curious. What do you hope to gain from running fiber?

I have been curious about the stuff, but have yet to find any practical use for it in a home setting.

Eliminate cross talk, longer runs, and I could move my rack to a different part of the basement slightly easier. For a normal home use, none at all really. Someday I might be crazy enough to have 10gb between switches but that will not happen until 10gb comes down in price.

I should mention that my basement is mostly unfinished so I was able to just drill up from the basement and into the walls. I also only put wires inside interior walls and nothing on the exterior walls.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039906775 said:
Not when you have to drill through rock to run your lines, and then snake your ethernet cords through the tiny holes :p

That was the biggest pain in the ass ever. I had to keep widening the hole to get all the wires I wanted to go through, through :p

Part of the problem of running wires properly in residential buildings is the fact that residential walls have wood cross beams that occlude the wire travel path. There also typically aren't loose ceiling tiles like in office buildings.

You wind up having to drill a hole for your face place, then use a flexible 90 degree drill segment and a long as extension to drill holes in the cross beams, followed by trying to actually snake the cors through the holes you have now made, that are practically impossible to reach.

Running wires is easy when a house is built, but doing it retroactively is a royal pain in the ass, unless you just say "fuck it, I'm just opening this sucker up, then putting new boards in and repainting the room. That makes the wire part easier, but now you have a lot of other work to contend with.

Of all the home projects I have worked on, running wires was one of the most frustrating.

You can use a coring drill ( I believe it is called) to go through rock. If you aren't even using a hammerdrill, forget it- right tool for the job.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'crossbeams'- there are 2 things that spring to mind. For a period, fireblocks were installed horizontally in every stud bay or every other stud bay, as it was thought to slow the spread of fire. I don't think they are still required. The other thing would be a top or bottom plate (the horizontal 2x4 attaching all the verticals).

Using a bellhanger bit or other long flexible shaft bit is the preferred way to deal with either.

There is no doubt installation is easiest right before the drywall goes on; attic and/or basement/crawlspace access makes covered walls do-able in almost all situations. Some scenarios may be outside the comfort zone of inexperienced installers, but experienced installers should have the know-how and proper tools.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039906775 said:
Part of the problem of running wires properly in residential buildings is the fact that residential walls have wood cross beams that occlude the wire travel path. There also typically aren't loose ceiling tiles like in office buildings.


I built houses for 8 years and the only places I ever saw "cross beams" (we called them "blocking") was behind kitchen cabinets and bathroom cabinets (and anywhere else where heavy things were planned to be hung from walls). They aren't required, they just make it easier to hang things. You do of course have to go through 2 layers of 2x4 at the top of the wall though. Thats where a 90 degree drill comes in handy.
 
Zarathustra[H];1039904497 said:
You are probably just causing yourself extra work by running all those drops.

Having done this myself in my old house, I learned the hard way that running ethernet cables in residential homes is about 100 times more of a PITA than it seems at the start of the project.

I mean, how many of those do you really ever use at the same time, and even when you do, you don't need a dedicated switch to get optimal performance. Heck, as I recall the Xbox360 only has 100Mbit support anyway...

If your switches support it, I would save yourself a lot of time, and just run two lines and triunk them, that way any large data transfers to NAS won't screw up your gaming.

Fortunately the spot I am going to locate the switch/router is very central to the places I need the most drops. The office/computer room is almost directly above the router, and the living room is a relatively short, straight run to the side of it. Both spots have good, well lit access in the basement, and the living room has a coax wall plate in the same general area that I am going to repurpose for ethernet, so should need minimal modification beyond routing the cables.

The 2nd floor bedrooms are going to be more of a hassle, but I probably won't go with more than 2 drops in those as I don't really see myself needing more than that. I have a feeling that a few of those rooms are going to annoy the hell out of me, though - the previous owner had coax run to a few 2nd floor rooms by poking holes in the ductwork and snaking cables through the floor registers, which I just finished removing and resealing yesterday.
 
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