Do I really need a 'Gigabit' network switch for everyday use?

ann_droid

""The Spanning Tree Protocol actually works to avoid having loops in a network, but at the same time allowing some kind of redundancy. Switches will need to support it.""

probably teaching granny to suck eggs...................

Effectively a 'ring' circuit of switches, giving TWO paths back the router. 
ONE port in that ring is suspended so that network broadcasts are stopped from "flooding" the network.
Should a break/failure occur, then that suspended port is (re-)activated to keep traffic flowing. 

arciere

ann_droid said:

""The Spanning Tree Protocol actually works to avoid having loops in a network, but at the same time allowing some kind of redundancy. Switches will need to support it.""

probably teaching granny to suck eggs...................

Effectively a 'ring' circuit of switches, giving TWO paths back the router. 
ONE port in that ring is suspended so that network broadcasts are stopped from "flooding" the network.
Should a break/failure occur, then that suspended port is (re-)activated to keep traffic flowing. 

That's right, but in a scenario where you connect two switches to one another with one cable, you don't need to worry about STP or other things, it just works.

jamesd

You should go gigabit because the gigabit standard supports power saving methods that aren't standard in the fast ethernet range. Two of those are turning off inactive ports and checking cable length and using lower power for short cables, likely to be every cable you use.

Power over ethernet PoE isn't needed unless you want the convenience of not having to run a power cable to cameras. Sometimes none is close and power down the network cable makes life easier or neater. You can also power many switches or WiFi routers this way if that matters.

If you were using nothing but internet then no faster than your connection would be correct but your cameras are extra and maybe you send files between computers or might want a network hard disk for storage or backup. Those things are faster with a faster ethernet connection.

For little good reason you might want cat 7 cables which are currently pretty cheap. That's future-proofing for ten gigabit so not really needed right now. I'm about to use flat cat 7 from internet router to switch (length too long for flat cat 8) and 1-2m round cat 8 from switch to everything else just because I have no cable or wired router but do use a file server. Definitely not needed for my current 40 megabits per second internet connection!

prowla

I'd buy the Gb switch if it's not a lot more.

However, the BB connection will not hit that level, eg. mine are 140 Mb & 200 Mb.