1 switch VS 2 switches connected to a router

[izzzy12k]

I would some advice on this... I'm looking to decongest my wireless network, which often leads to the wireless network crashing and needing to reset the router.

Would it be worth the investment to get two switches and set up as described below:

switch #1
XBOX360
Computer running Wow quite often

switch #2
computer
computer running wow once in a while

or

should I just setup with all four on one switch?

I know that I probably could use a better router, but am looking to figure out a good solution for this senario so that less stuff is left on the wireless network... which would be second XBOX360, Ipad, and occasional 3DS networking and anything else I can't remember offhand right now.

 

[eibgrad]

It makes absolutely no difference whether you have all the wired devices on the router's switch, or patch additional switches for those devices. All you're doing is adding more LAN ports, that's it. They're all still part of the same network. So whatever you're problems may be, all this manipulation of switches is solving nothing. Your problems w/ the wireless network crashing (not sure what that means) lie elsewhere.

The only time you might want to add switches is either because you simply exhausted the available ports on the router, and/or your router only supports 10/100Mbps ethernet, but you’d like to use Gigabit (1000Mbps) ethernet speeds between your local devices. In that case, hanging a Gigabit switch off the router’s 10/100Mbps switch allows you to have Gigabit speeds between the devices on the Gigabit switch (assuming those devices have Gigabit ethernet adapters, of course).

 

[izzzy12k]

Thanks.

I thought that maybe splitting the load from one of the router's ports to two (using two switches) would be better...

Currently all the items listed above are using the wireless side of the router and it gets overwhelmed quite often... I'm sure a better router might help, but I'm hoping that getting a switch will be a better long term solution. Cause I'm sure as time passes my family likely get more wireless devices to add to the network.

I will likely then get a single switch for the devices I plan to remove from the wireless network.

 

[eibgrad]

It might be possible for a business to overload a switch given truly heavy loading. But it's very hard to imagine any home user overwhelming the capacity of a switch. You'd *really* have to be pumping a TON of data over longs periods of time for that to happen, so I just don't see it.

Now wireless is another animal. Because wireless is a shared, half-duplex resource, every user must take turns accessing the lone frequency. And while they have that freq., all other wireless users must WAIT. As you add more users, wait times gets longer and longer, and throughput for each individual user drops dramatically. That’s why, unlike a switch, wireless doesn’t scale very well. It only takes a few concurrent wireless users to bring a network to its knees.

 

[jamesmcuk]

+1 for everything Eibgrad says. It is unlikely you are overloading your switch with four nodes and if you are the hardware either sucks or is faulty. Wow is a great game but really isn't a massive hog unless you are on the worst package your ISP offers!

I am not sure what you are trying to say in your original post as everything has to go though your router and it is then NAT'ed to your local IP.

The answer to your original question is "no"

 

[izzzy12k]

Thanks for the replies.

To better explain my original question (which has been answered) was if running the 4 devices onto one switch to a single router port was not a good idea as compared to having two switches connected to two ports on the router.

I'll be getting a single switch and running the 4 devices onto it.

 

[izzzy12k]

Best answer selected by izzzy12k.