Extending A Network

[Emmaxxx]

Hi

I'd like to extend my wired (cat5) network. Currently I have a combined wireless and wired 54g lynksys router of which is not ideally situated to use wirelessly, nor do i really want to move it to a higher position which would reveal all the cables and the cat5 cables to the room are chased in to the wall.
How can I best extend my network using a wired\wireless switch? Primarilly I want to extend this to my lounge for multmedia purposes with the highest possible bandwidth for video transfer.

I'm not sure how switches work and how they're connected, just that they're better than hubs for transfering full bandwidth to each PC.

Thanxxx
M

 

[LTR12101B]

A switch (or correctly, a switched hub), enables all systems on the same switch-hub to make full speed point to point connections with each other, so long as nothing else requires the same destination, so it can help a machine to machine transfer, while other traffic passess it by.

A switch cannot improve broadband sharing, as the single source is the limitation.

I believe you can get alternate firmware for a WRT54G (though you may now have to request the special "Linux" model with more RAM) that enables it to be converted into a wireless to wired gateway - so you use two, one as an access point with normal or custom firmware, and one as a wireless to wired gateway to support devices with no wireless capability.

The router will normally be a switched hub as well.

Lets say you had 3 systems on a second switch-hub....

A & B could have a full speed traffic exchange with each other, while C could exchange full speed with another system on the first router.

If all systems exchange traffic back to the first router, then it doesn't matter tif the hub is switched or not, the only advantage of switching is it allows uncontended traffic to cross without interfering, as if you made point to point links for each system.

 

[Emmaxxx]

Thanx for your quick response
My intensions are, and please correct me if there is a better method, to link my wired linksys router to a combined wired\wireless switch via cat5.
The switch will then serve my lounge and maybe other locations in time with a wired connection.
Having the option of a combined wireless switch would be for future upgrade for a wirless laptop....would make a nice Christmas box
The wired\wireless switch would be better located in a higher position, close to the ceiling, centre of the my property.
I live in a bungalow, so routing the cable is not a problem. I would use one of the exiting cables already connected from the router to serve the switch, but i would have to sacrifice a connection that leads to another PC, and to reconnect this PC via the new switch.
To try and make the picture clearer i have 3 PCs in 3 rooms and would like to extended to a fourth room (the lounge).
Bedroom 1 has the linksys wired\wireless router sat on my desk and the cables are neatly hidden through a cable tidy and then chased into the wall.
The Other 2 PC's\rooms are wired but the cables are crudely hanging from the
ceiling, waiting for a nice man to make a better job.
Would it be a better option to swap my linksys router for a cheaper switch and then to relocate my router and use it's wireless option. By doing this, How then would I connect my broadband cable modem?

I hope all this makes sense, and sorry for the essay!

Thanxxx
Em

 

[VIPER_1069]

I would advise and the on the recommendation of a friend that works in my computer store when i bought a router ... for FASTEST data transfer a CABLED network is the way to go if you need to throw around LARGE amounts of data

WI-FI is great until you try launching a couple of hundred mb of data at a time at it then it starts to choke and drop out

Its fine if you want to download the odd file or two or surf via WI-FI but if you intend to make serious use streaming media either direct from the net or from a slave server machine then go cabled for fastest transfer

 

[LTR12101B]

Agree, if you CAN cable, then DO cable - other than some half-baked pseudo-standards, wifi has a maximum of 54 Mbit half duplex, while wired, these days, is normally 100 Mbit full duplex.


Another thing, wifi range can be impossible to judge, the signal can be a complete washout at amazingly short range, as well as getting wiped out by co-chaneel interference from Video senders and microwave ovens (802.11b/g) - what idiot put it in the microwave oven frequency band, as the way most of them work (raw rectified AC to the magnetron) means they are wideband noise producers centred on Wifi channel 9 / Videosender channel C.

 

[Emmaxxx]

Cable it is! The whole point of networking in my case is to distribute video and music etc. My Aopen XCube I believe supports 1000mbit transfer, but would I need to upgrade to a router to support this?
Could you recommend a router\modem combi if this is the case.

Thanx for your help guys, muchly appreciated

MXXX