Ethernet connection dropping out every 10 mins

JSH you have a very good point. I think it stems from the fact historically and perhaps even some current broadband routers (although I an mot aware of any) do not switch effectively. Its also fair to say from reading this forum, that there can be interoperability issues with multicast groups used by some broadband routers for IPTV with the multicast discovery group used for UPnP streaming - using a simple basic switch can bypass this capability but by reducing efficiency... but probably not an issue for the current low bandwidths used in most home networks, but I would expect to change in a few years.

Simon

Also if you have a lot of things on your network (I have about 20 if my wife and I are home and more if the grown up kids are there too), then this can stress a consumer grade router. Restarting a hub which includes a router and a modem takes a lot longer than just restarting a router. So personally I like them to be separate.

best

David

JSH posted:

Out of interest, can you folks tell me why you still have separate modem, routers and switches? Sounds rather quaint to me.  Aren't you just increasing the likelihood of a connection failure somewhere?

My Homehub5 is a modem/router combined and has 4 GigE connections and works perfectly unless Openreach dig up the road.  Isn't one box a damn sight easier, more elegant and less prone to error than three?  What am I missing here?

I have 7 devices wired to my Netgear switch (and one from the router) and I'm not aware of any ISP router that has 8 Gigabit sockets.  The Netgear switch cost a mere £26.  The cost of buying a router that had as many sockets, if there even is such a thing, would likely dwarf that figure.

Secondly, if my ISP or more likely, BT dig up the road, it doesn't matter if my internet goes down, my home network keeps going.

Thirdly, ISP routers are cheap junk and some have 100Mb speeds through their Ethernet which would be a bottleneck for speeds on a home network.  My router has 100Mb speeds yet with the switch I have full 1000Mb speeds across my home network which is very useful when moving ripped CD's around the place.

Further to the junk ISP routers  .......... Some time back I helped someone rewire his office, no audio, just PC's, screens, printers & NAS.   During this we had a PC connected to the ISP router & noticed the connection was almost instant according to PC LED flash rates.  When connecting to the 8 port unmanaged switch there were significant 20 & more second delays (I finished the job with an all sytem power cycle).   I tried the same when at home on my BT HH4 & found the same, instant connection on the HH4,  but delays on the switch & very long delays when I moved to another port.   To me this might indicative of the ISP router not switching intelligently & is broadcasting to the whole network,  whereas the switch is checking out MAC addresses.  That's one reason why I am not convinced about cheap & ISP routers being used as switches for audio. 

As someone, I think Simon, pointed out recently, an unmanaged switch takes a while to recognise that a new device has been plugged into it (whereas a hub is instant). What you are supposed to do is power cycle the switch after connecting something new to it. This takes only a few seconds and after that everything just works.

best

David

I fully understand the need to power cycle a switch,  I think it was me who posted the video on switch connections & power cycling.      My point is the cheaper & my ISP routers do not seem to have need for this & are more or less instant connections.  My question:   is this indicative that these routers are not be concerned about MAC address verification & as such don't identify source or intended destinations & broadcast to all the devices on the network. 

OK before anyone says it - so what !!!   they work OK & if the user is not having buffer or other problems,  who cares.  My problem is the router makes invariably say something like gigabit LAN ports  but what does this tell us about it being a real switch ????  There are no specifics in any router info that indicates they are a real switch, i.e. one that can send & receive simultaneously & only between specific designated MAC addresses.    So for me they are not & I will keep on with a pukka switch,  but I'm interested in getting some more concrete info on this.

I suspect that more often than not cheaper consumer hubs/routers do indeed have hubs rather than switches in them, but I'm sure that isn't true in every case. Does it matter? A hub rather than a switch means a lot more traffic moving round the network and I suppose that could cause congestion, although if everything is gigabit, that may not matter. I have found that discovery works much better since I put everything into a switch rather than having some things plugged into the router. How does this better discovery manifest itself? The only things I have noticed is that I almost never have to restart my Nsim streamers (I used to have to do it on one or other of them every week or so, I can reliably see my downloads folder in my Unitiserve (previously it was a bit hit and miss) and my windows 7 PC can always see my network printer (I previously had to reboot the PC quite often to see the printer which was visible on other PCs)

best

David

@ Mike - I think there is a logic in what you wrote. NAIM seems to recommend that a good access point and a good switch are to be used, for stable results.
At the end of the day the logic may be there - we use ultra expensive pieces of audio kit, and try to squeeze stable info to them via a 30 pound piece of kit???

David Hendon posted:

As someone, I think Simon, pointed out recently, an unmanaged switch takes a while to recognise that a new device has been plugged into it (whereas a hub is instant). What you are supposed to do is power cycle the switch after connecting something new to it. This takes only a few seconds and after that everything just works.

best

David

My unmanaged switch seems to be able to recognise new connections pretty much instantly, and I never need to power cycle it. As I understand it, that is how they should work, so I'm not sure I agree with you on this one.

There was a very interesting YouTube video which covered this and demo'd the difference quite persuasively . You could probably find it by searching the forum. I can look for it tonight but don't have time to do that now.

best

David

David Hendon posted:

There was a very interesting YouTube video which covered this and demo'd the difference quite persuasively

'ere e' be         https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...32#51407790440652632

The issue the guy in the video makes is that there can sometimes be a delay in data flow if you swap the connection from one port to another. In my experience, this is not an issue when adding a new connection. 

 Chris,  I've just had a morning with no power so the Netgear switch has gone through a power cycle - including a correct sequenced switch on for the Naim & NAS.    When I plugged in my temporary ethernet cable to upload new albums, the switch took aprx 10 seconds to connect to my laptop.   Its been unplugged for about 1 hour since that,  but I have just connected it again & its almost instant.  This is what I expect as - as I understand how they work - that port on the switch has learned the laptop's MAC address.       

ChrisSU posted:

The issue the guy in the video makes is that there can sometimes be a delay in data flow if you swap the connection from one port to another. In my experience, this is not an issue when adding a new connection. 

I don't think the difference between a swapped connection and a new connection is a real one in this context. But it does strike me that if you take the Netgear GS1xx range, they power down unused ports to save energy and if you plug something into a port that is powered down, it immediately powers up. It would be trivial for the designer to make the switch do any re-scanning it needed to do automatically in this situation and so perhaps with such modern switches they do handle new or changed connections immediately without a power cycle by design.

best

David

After reading through this thread I decided on installing a switch even though I have a fairly simple network of a SU, US and a Nas in my living room. 

Have to say its made a big difference speed wise, before my ipad would sometimes hunt for the Unitiserve on the Naim app. But now it's instantaneous!!  Fantastic!!!

thanks to those who recommended a switch!!!!

Just to refer to a post a little while back, most unmanaged switches are quick and detecting new devices. There are typicall two stages .. One the switch does and one the devices on the. Network do to get the switch able to switch data to a device.

1) the link negotiation takes place with the device on the switch port. This sets the physical and link properties on the port such as two way communication and port speed. Typically less than a second.

2) the Ethernet address table cache in the switch and devices is then populated when the switch listens to new devices on the network discovering each other using ARP when they want to send data to each other for the first time or after a long period of inactivity. The cache entry for a switch path is established within a few tens of milliseconds. The cache for a device is flushed depending on switch but typically after  hours of no access, and after which discovery has to take place again for that device.

now managed switches can take longer as they can have additional steps to detect spanning tree loops and other things, and this can add a few seconds to bring up the link connection.

But the key thing, if the switch is power cycled whilst the devices/hosts remain  powered up, the ability of the devices/hosts to use the switch is down to their  correct implementation of ARP and timeouts... without that the switch is blind to a device or only holds partial info.

Simon

CSI_Basel posted:

After reading through this thread I decided on installing a switch even though I have a fairly simple network of a SU, US and a Nas in my living room.   Have to say its made a big difference speed wise, before my ipad would sometimes hunt for the Unitiserve on the Naim app. But now it's instantaneous!!  Fantastic!!!

Simple systems does not mean a switch is not required CSI,  the schematic drawing I posted 01/03/16 is my even simpler system.   My mistrust of wireless routers is known to the forum'ites who are interested, all a bit boring to everyone else.    However I am interested in what make model & price bracket your router is.      

I've got a Zyxel NBG4615, around 100 euros so pretty inexpensive.  Got the switch from the same company. 

I've got 100Mb connection and so I always found it annoying when I used the Naim app and sometimes I would be waiting 15 to 20 secs while it re-connected with the Unitiserve so I could see my albums. 

So now I get connected within 3 to 4 secs!!

Thanks for the recommendation!