Do I need SWITCHES?

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DaiToBu

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Jul 25, 2012
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I really don't understand much about networking, but I had built a NAS recently and my transfer speed around 5-6 mbps.
My current network hook up is
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But I hard people said it better for powerline or LAN if I use switch, so this is what I thought.
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I only need one ethernet port, and that one for my host powerline.
 
Solution
navalweaponsofficer
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Either you misunderstood what the individual was telling you, or the person you talked to has less real knowledge about networking then you.

Where you are putting the switch is absolutely pointless, and if you connected a device to that switch besides the router it would not work (or it would work but no device connected to your router would have internet).
Your consumer grade modem only has output Ethernet port because it can only support 1 device. It needs a router to allow the support of more devices, thus a router has to be the very next thing connected to the modem (except for specific cases that is more for business/enterprise situations).

A switch, would be usefull after the powerline network adapter.
This way your PCs and the NAS can communicate at full gigabit speeds to each other. The switch has enough logic to be able to send data from the NAS to one of the PCs without requiring the router (and thus having to be slowed down by the powerline adapter), without the switch it has to go back up to the router.
 
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Hi

What is model of wireless router?
Most have a switch built in with 4 ports?

You need router to act as dhcp server to provide tcp/IP network address for each PC or device on network so it must connect to internet broadband modem

If only one Ethernet port on router this should go to a switch
Then each power line adapter can go to a port on switch

If router has built in switch with 4 ports a separate switch may not be needed

Usually Ethernet cable is faster than power line or wireless especially for gaming

Regards
Mike Barnes
 
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In current configuration PC1 has to go thorugh power line to router, and back down powerline to NAS. The powerline is the slowest part of this link.

The 6MBps is in realty 48mbps. The B is for bytes, and b is for bits, 8 bits = 1 Byte. When windows gives you file transfer speed it is in BYTES per second but all network equipment measures speed in bits per second.

A av500 powerline adapter will go at about 80-100 mbps, but considering that data has to travel both up and down the powelrine that splits it in half so 48mbps or 6mBps would be correct.

If all the devices that need speedy access to the NAS are the hardwired PCs, then just do as I said and put a gigabit switch after the powerline adapter and plug the 2 PCs and the NAS into it.

If wireless devices need just as much access to the NAS then move to NAS to wireless router and that should at least double the speed.
 
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Boast1g: That person I was talking about on FREENAS forum told me ethernet through router would reduce my speed, so I should use Switches instead. But I guess I don't need switches, because there are many available port from the router that I still don't need.

Boast1g: So it'll be better if the main PC, and NAS server connect to the same SWITCHES? What happen if the other computer using powerline with 600MBPS?

Mbarnes86: I am using Netgear R6300


navalweaponsofficer: My Nas connect direct to my router, but my main PC still on powerline 🙁. I guess they all need to be together in one hub/switches?

Boast1g: I still don't understand why my powerline slower than my wifi. One time I did a speedtest.net on my wifi, it went up 70 mbps, but my powerline only 50MBPS. For local transfer my powerline trasnfer 5-7 mbps, but my wifi around 8-10 mbps. I always thought powerline is better. I have ZyXEL 600 Mbps Mini Powerline AV2 Gigabit Adapter, and I thought the transfer rate would go around 100 Mbps throught home network. I also bought a new gigabit ethernet adapter for my server to help improve it, but I will test it tonight.
 
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By the way my NAS motherboard is M2N Sli https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M2NSLI/. I am not sure if the ethernet on that motherboard slow down or anything, but one guy told me to buy PCI-E ethernet adapter. I bought this one http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003CFATNI?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00. Is it a waste, or improve?
 
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If nas was moved to router everything still on powerline will be limited to 5-6MBps but any wireless clients would likely be faster than the powerline.
 
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Solution
Whoever told you that the nas would be slower on the router than a switch has no clue....unless you are talking 100m ports on the router and 1g ports on a external switch.

If you look at the FCC filings for routers where they list the parts inside the router you will find in many router the 4 lan ports use a small switch chip. It is exactly the same chip you find in small external swtich.

When you hook things to the router LAN ports you ARE hooking it to a switch the router function is in a different chip.

All the powerline speeds you see only have 2 devices when you add more than 2 the speed is reduced greatly because of the overhead of having more than 2.
 
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The person on freenas may have assumed the output LAN ports on the router are only 10/100 ports (so limited to 100mbps or 12mBps), your router has gigabit ports so the router itself is not being a bottleneck.

There might be some confusion, does each PC and NAS have its own powerline adapter, or is there just one pair of powerline adapters going from router to location B, and the NAS/2 PCs are connected to that powerline adapter via Ethernet? I was thinking it was the 2nd one.


As far as speed, you should be getting a little better speed then 70mbps but powerline adapters are quite variable. How many feet of power wires it has to go through, if has to pass from one phase on the house to another, if you have florescent lights or electric motors on those legs of powers all effect its performance.
Also you should have the powerline adapters both plugged directly into wall outlet, no surge protectors, ups, power strips or even port splitters (turns 1 outlet into multiple).

One other thing, ZyXEL is not exactly a beacon of quality, I typically avoid the brand entirely since others like tp-link or trendnet are equally as inexpensive or at most only a few dollars more.

If you have multiple powerline adapters then the other thing you need to realize is that the 600mbps bandwidth is split across all adapters. So the adapter from the NAS is using bandwidth and the adapter to the PC is using bandwidth when transferring file from NAS to PC (or streaming a movie or something). Powerline adapters are a simple way to have a wire connection when you cant run Ethernet from point A to point B, however they quickly loose their luster when you start adding in Point C and Point D.
 
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Wireless is almost harder to predict than powerline. It is greatly influenced by the distance and the number of walls/floors it must pass though.

Like powerline the more devices you run at the same time the more they interfere. Unlike powerline though wireless has much less control over who transmits and when. Then if that was not bad enough even devices you have no control over like neighbors wireless or devices like baby monitor or cordless phones also transmit interfering and degrading the signals.

Wireless may have more total bandwidth to start with but it is much more susceptible to interference.
 
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