Network Switch Setup?

You probably don't need the second switch, unless you are planning to use a higher-end Ethernet interconnect between switch #2 and your player.  Keep in mind the quality of the power supply when considering your choices for a switch (or plan to purchase an aftermarket linear supply).

Also–I'd highly suggest spending the extra money on extra ports per switch–the more ports, the faster the embedded processor used to drive the switch.  You will always lose 1 port per daisy-chained infrastructure run, such that a four-port switch fills up quickly, as below:

Switch #1:

1. Infrastructure run, router to Switch #1
2. NAS
3. <open>
4. Infrastructure run, Switch #1 to #2

Switch #2:

1. Infrastructure run, Switch #1 to #2
2. Streaming player
3. <open>
4. <open> -or- future infrastructure run

I like managed switches myself - TP Link seems to be good value - but these are not required.

Hi David

thank you for the information.

didn't realise about extra ports = better performance. Will take note their.

my current switch is actually 5 port, it's the netgear 105. Not sure what power supply it uses though?

i will take your advice and leave all alone for now.

Regards, Anton

My 2 cents is to get a 10 port switch for #1. You'll eventually use the ports.  I have a Cisco 300 series, though think either the 200 or 300 series would be great.  Don't see why you need switch 2, unless you need it to connect the long run to another ethernet cable to your streamer.

Adding a separate wireless access point into the switch ("Switch 1" in your case) and turning off the wireless in the router given to me by my ISP made a huge improvement in my network performance.  We have over 15 wireless devices in the house.... The switch manages all of those connections also, regardless of the number of physical ports. So, if you are adding Switch 1 and leaving on the wireless in the router, you are only off-loading the downstream physical connections through the switch.

Is there any advantage of the Cisco switches over my Netgear GS 108 and 105?

Yes, but there's no reason to change them out until you start seeing the network slow down.

The Cisco 200+ series has some smart management of traffic and let's you manage the performance and security. That speeds things up. But, not necessary unless you are having problems.  I was, and a separate wireless access point + the switch made a huge impact.

Thanks for the info.

i need the switch downstairs for streamer and sky box. That leaves 2 ports free.

i thought that adding a switch in the office, then using this for NAS and linking to switch downstairs would make a separate network when streaming music. Especially hi def stuff.

everything works ok at moment so maybe I will leave well alone. I have Linksys e4200 in office as my wireless and switch router and so far it's worked flawlessly. 

Hope all this makes sense. Diagrams would help but never mind 

Switches by definition keep streams of traffic separate if the traffic is unicast (from one single device to another single device). So any amount of traffic from say, a pc to a skybox will not affect the traffic stream from a NAS to the hi-fi. The exception to this would be if any device was spewing out large amounts of broadcast/multicast traffic, which will be sent down every port. Another factor I have come across is on really busy networks where the actual switch performance (high cpu utilisation) can cause issues.

In the case of bigger switches, give some thought to how noisy they can be.  We have infrastructure cabling in our house an needed 48 port switch.  I planned to install 2 x 24 and initially installed one from Netgear, which worked very well but was extremely noisy - more than 40 dB which is nearly conversation level and intolerable in a home environment, even inside a cupboard.  Larger switches, especially managed ones, generally have full-time fans but you can get fanless ones and it is definitely worth hunting these down.  We have now got HP fanless switches which are silent.