[SOLVED] Daisychaining and cpu load sharing questions.

[Antonio Farias]

Hello everyone!

I'm a self taught amateur network enthusiast, and this is my first multiple-router-network on the making here. So thanks anyone for the help!
Also, I made some diagrams so I hope it helps!

I have two questions,
first one I feel to be more basic:

Is there any problems or disadvantages to daisy-chaining routers as in option B? They will all be in access point mode, with the exception of router #1 and the ISP modem(bridge). Also, there is around 20 meters of Cat6 cable in between each router (except the ISP modem; it's right beside Router #1).


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My router #1 on a busy day will be under a heavy load, with up to 20 people on it's hotspot and their smartphones and laptops. #1's Slave routers #2, #3, #4 and #5 will only have 2-4 people on them.

So, my second question is:

- Is there anyway to relief the Computing load from my Router #1? Maybe substituting my Router #2 for a better and more powerful router and somehow having it processing data coming from #3 and #4?

• Maybe if I don't set Router #2 up as an access point, and just deactivate it's DHCP? Will router #3 and #4 work as its slave routers?
• Or maybe having router #2 receive it's ethernet from Router#1 in its Wan port, creating another net. Although this could create double Nat issues, no?
  

Which option should I take?
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-Or nah, maybe I have no way of relieving the master router(#1) and I should just set it up as option A or option B. Or maybe even I'm fine with this amount of people and routers with these routers.

Thanks you so much! any help is appreciated!

 

[kanewolf]

Option "B" has ALL the APs on a single GigE. Option A, each AP has a GigE back to the "core" switch.
Your complaint about all the devices connected to your primary router is because of transmit power. To get devices to the other 3 APs, you need to turn DOWN the transmit power on the primary router so that the other 3 APs have similar signal strength.
But you did use a term in your original post, you used "hot spot". Does this mean you are using a captive portal to require vouchers or other registration ? If so, you could look at moving that to a separate device, like a PI4.

 

[bill001g]

So I will skip to the end without reading a lot of your details.

When you run devices as AP they do not actually use the router part of the box. The switch part is a hardware solution much like small unmanned switches. This is all done with asic chips so the device will not delay the traffic.

The only risk you take with daisy chaining them is the port speed is limited to 1gbit. It all depend on how the traffic flows. Say you had 2 pairs of machines a-b and c-d. If all four of these were plugged into a single switch you could have 2 gigbit (technically 4 since it can transfer in both direction at the same time) but if share a cable
in the path it would limit the total bandwidth to 1gbit/

 

[Antonio Farias]

Kanewolf


about the "hotspot" term, I probably misused it, I meant it as the #1 routers wi-fi range. As in router #1 will have 20 people connected to if it via its wi-fi. Forgive the technical ignorance.


Bill001g
I only receive 1 Gigabit from my ISP anyway, so daisychaining like that wouldn't be a problem would it?

 

[kanewolf]

Kanewolf


about the "hotspot" term, I probably misused it, I meant it as the #1 routers wi-fi range. As in router #1 will have 20 people connected to if it via its wi-fi. Forgive the technical ignorance.


Bill001g
I only receive 1 Gigabit from my ISP anyway, so daisychaining like that wouldn't be a problem would it?

If it is #1 has all the WIFI clients, then you need to turn down the transmit power on #1 so that it isn't drowning out the rest.

 

[Antonio Farias]

If it is #1 has all the WIFI clients, then you need to turn down the transmit power on #1 so that it isn't drowning out the rest.

I see. It won't have all of the wifi clients, but certainly around 80%.

 

[Antonio Farias]

Just to be clear, I have not set up this network yet, and I am just afraid #1 will be overloaded with so many clients.

In light if that I was thinking to share #1's load by buying a better router for #2, and not having it set as an access point. But maybe that doesn't make sense.

 

[bill001g]

You have to pretend what is inside the "router" is 3 boxes.

You have a router chip that has 1 lan port and 1 wan port. You have 1 or 2 wifi radio chips that sorta function as a AP with a single ethernet port. You then have a switch with 4 lan port and a port going to the router chip and to each of the wifi chips.

Used to be routers used the same chip a small 5 or 8 port switch uses. These switch chips have the capacity to run 1gbit up and 1gbit down on all the port at the same time. So the a 8 port chip can pass 16gbit of traffic though its backplane...not that I know of any way to get that much traffic.

The traffic never leave the switch when the machines just talk to each other. The only time it goes to the router is if it is going to internet. In that case you are limited by the ports on router chip. BUT you could have 1 machine using 1gbit of internet and 2 other machines doing maybe a file backup locally at 1gbit.

Now this assumes you are not doing anything fancy like running parental filters or VPN on the router chip. That will slow it down a lot. This still has no impact on traffic that does not go to the internet.

 

[Antonio Farias]

Thanks for explaining! That's a clear way of putting it.

I don't think anyone will be doing any local work on this network. It's mostly basic browsing and some streaming. Also no VPN and parental control. So since anything to the internet can't go above 1gigabit, that daisychain on a single port won't be strained, right? Might have some latency issues with a few clients on the same port, though, right? Or just turn down transmit power like Kane suggested.

 

[kanewolf]

Thanks for explaining! That's a clear way of putting it.

I don't think anyone will be doing any local work on this network. It's mostly basic browsing and some streaming. Also no VPN and parental control. So since anything to the internet can't go above 1gigabit, that daisychain on a single port won't be strained, right? Might have some latency issues with a few clients on the same port, though, right? Or just turn down transmit power like Kane suggested.

It would be if a device on #4 was transferring a file to a device on #2 AND a device on #3 was downloading a game update from the internet. Then the traffic from #3 and #4 would have to share the single link through #2 and to the internet. It is always better to "home run" your wired connectivity back to your primary router or core switch. You get more bandwidth and you don't have the possibility of a failure of #2 taking out all your other devices.

 

[vov4ik_il]

I would use a high throughput dedicated firewall/router hardware to work NAT tracking and forwarding (say dedicated pFsense or even Mikrotik) to enjoy full 1GBit throughput and offload the radio work to all those (as) access points...
I personally used #1 from here and it does well even with smaller packets and QoS on a dedicated symmetric 1GBps.
You can use a dual-nic old PC for that too. The real challenge in a multiuser environment is not the bits per second but packets per second (PPS), this defines the number of headers your router has to process and relabel. Another challenge would be VPN if you plan on using it.
Not every switch can handle a high frame per second (fps), so make sure the one you use will manage. The inexpensive SOHO ones would be something like this.
As for physical topology, star (looks like option A in your case) is the fail-safest and easiest to manage.

 

[Antonio Farias]

Thank you all so much guys! This is amazing advice and I learned so much! y'all are amazing!