what device to put in a room with 2-3 networked devices

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sparks

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In one room I had a blu ray player and I have cat5 pulled to the room and a jack in the wall.
Now I need to add a second network device in that room. What would be the best hardware to put there for more than one connection. I have several old 5 port routers and a switch I can use...
but want to ask I am not super great on network. (and I am not saying I am super on everything else)
 
Can you describe your current setup? i.e. Is it just an empty room? Do you already have one computer using that jack and how is it connected to the jack? As well, what kind/model of routers and switches?
 
sorry I should have said I have a blu ray player, a roku box and a media player.
I want to set up some type of nas in my computer room to stream iso movies to the media player as well. I may replace the old cat5 with 5e or 6 in the future.
 
An old router will be fine (if it has an integrated switch) as long as you turn off the DHCP server. Do not use the WAN port on the router unless the firmware on your router lets you assign it as a switch port instead.

A switch is what you want, and most routers can do that.
 
dandragonrage said:
An old router will be fine (if it has an integrated switch) as long as you turn off the DHCP server. Do not use the WAN port on the router unless the firmware on your router lets you assign it as a switch port instead.

A switch is what you want, and most routers can do that.
Click to expand...

With an extra bit of caution....what if the LAN IP address of this old router you're using as a switch, is the same as your current router? Say..both 192.168.1.1.
Just disabling DHCP won't do a thing about that. If you don't change that second routers LAN IP address to be DIFFERENT than your primary router, if you uplink them together as you suggested, ..uhm...the network activity will get interesting to say the least!
 
Good point. Either change the LAN IP to be something different than the primary router but outside of its DHCP range (192.168.1.2, I guess) or you can make it outside of your subnet (e.g. 192.168.2.1 - and that won't affect the switch ports)
 
I suggest just picking up a cheap reliable switch off of newegg or somewhere. The problem with the older routers, which I experienced personally, is the throughput seems to be less then the new hardware out there. I am not saying this is a fact, but I have experienced that. Hell, maybe it needed a newer firmware, it was several years old.

But, a small gigabyte switch did the job for me. One line dropped in, and ran it to my core switch in my rack.
 
I tried an old dlink router and could never get it to work correctly.
2 devices and when you turned on the second one i got a duplicate IP warning on the computer I was using to test it.

So I will just get a cheap giga switch.
 
CiscoInside said:
I suggest just picking up a cheap reliable switch off of newegg or somewhere. The problem with the older routers, which I experienced personally, is the throughput seems to be less then the new hardware out there. I am not saying this is a fact, but I have experienced that. Hell, maybe it needed a newer firmware, it was several years old..
Click to expand...

Actually is IS a fact. Newer home grade off the shelf retail routers have faster CPUs and more RAM than prior generations. They need to these days, to keep up with faster internet connections, more multi-media being done on the web, etc.
Refer to the following chart..
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_chart/Itemid,189/

Notice it's pretty much always the newest routers boasting the fastest speeds (the current champ being DLinks DIR-685 at 659 megs), and as you go down the chart...the make/model of routers tend to fall to older generation routers...
 
And every router in that list is still way faster than almost any residential broadband you can get, so not sure why that matters? Plus they compared routers with 100mbit to gigabit, which is obviously going to be much faster....

For the OP, you can will want something with a gigabit switch, especially for streaming from a NAS. So if none of your current hardware has that, check out the 8 port gigabit for 30$ on amazon. If you have a router, you can connect that single cat5 cable to one of the lan ports. Shut off DHCP and make the routers IP 192.168.1.2 (assuming the original is 192.168.1.1). On the original router, change the number of DHCP clients to say 10, then change the range to 192.168.1.100-192.168.110 or something. This will prevent the 192.168.1.2 address you assigned the second router out of the DHCP pool, so no more address conflicts. If the router has wireless, you then have an access point in your room. Just set it to the same SSID/Encryption/Password as the your existing wireless router. That's how my house is setup, and my phone gets perfect wireless throughout the house.
 
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