8 port switch hub, help required

chaddythebear

I have wired my house as i do it up by running cat5e cable to each room as i renovate, wireless router in in loft and currently have 4 cables into it and they all go to patch panel first.

So wireless router is full and i have bought a switch hub of ebay ages ago, it came with no instructions so just looking for a bit of advice to save me running up and down stairs.

It has 8 ports labled 1 - 8, which one do i connect to the router? I thought it would have seperate port for this purpose but no, so i would kind of call it a 7 port hub.

Have googled the model and can't see any online instructions.

thanks

crampo_2

Well on the switch i have it hasn't got a dedicated port. I use Port 1 With a crossover cable. But its normally the last port that has the connections the other way round, so you can you a straight through cable.

You normally find these kind of switches with 16 ports+

fwor

Anything recent will probably have auto-sensing, so you can use any port without needing a crossover cable.

Older switches often have the word "uplink" on one port that is intended to connect to a router without a crossover cable.

boxrick

chaddythebear wrote: »

I have wired my house as i do it up by running cat5e cable to each room as i renovate, wireless router in in loft and currently have 4 cables into it and they all go to patch panel first.

So wireless router is full and i have bought a switch hub of ebay ages ago, it came with no instructions so just looking for a bit of advice to save me running up and down stairs.

It has 8 ports labled 1 - 8, which one do i connect to the router? I thought it would have seperate port for this purpose but no, so i would kind of call it a 7 port hub.

Have googled the model and can't see any online instructions.

thanks

In the back of your router at the moment, there is a built in network switch. Connecting anything to this means it is then part of your network. So plugging the switch into your router then means the switch becomes part of your network.

So if you take a standard ethernet cable from any of the ethernet connections on your router and then take it into any of the inputs on the switch ( i use 1 for the sake of it, but any will work ). It will then begin to work. So any computer connected into the network switch will act as if its plugged directly into the back of the router.

You can even chain switches on switches, but each time this is done it will make it slower and slower 1 is fine possibly 2 if you want to have multiple computers or devices in a single room.

Hope that helps...

As above mentioned older switches sometimes have uplink but i find even on those types of switches it still does not actually matter.

chaddythebear

Thanks to all, there are no markings on it, so port 1 for me.

Great help:D

BikerEd

What make/model is the switch/hub. Do you know if it is a switch or a hub, do you know what speed it is? Assuming it is 100Mbit then it will be OK, but if you bought it off eBay a while ago you could have picked up a 10Mbit switch which will give very poor local network performance if you are shipping data between machines.

isofa

as per boxrick, it doesn't need a cross over, it's already network ready, you can connect the router to any port and any PCs to any other port and it'll work. It doesn't need uplink/crossover etc. This are primarily used to connect multi-hubs together.

If you are just using it for internet sharing, a 10Mbps hub/switch will be fine (you'll get better performance out of a switch), and even for normal data transfer, only if you are shifting lots of large files and streaming video will a 100Mbps be better.

chaddythebear

Its a q-teq 8 port switch hub, seems to work ok.

I only have one laptop in my house anyway, its brick built so wireless router does not work that great, i'm renovating it and just thought it would be a good idea to put a data point in every room, also put a coaxial, you cant go wrong doing that.

Its brick walls that are plastered so if i don't do it now i never will