Question Home Networking Question

[SFXXIV]

I have ATT DSL service with a Residential Gateway (modem/wireless router combo). Service runs into a room on the main floor and I get pretty good wireless coverage for the main floor where the gateway is located. I would like to set up patch panels and switches in the basement for whole-home distribution. Two questions. (1) If I install a wallplate with ethernet jacks in the room where the gateway is located and run an ethernet cable from the LAN port to the wall plate, how should the wiring be done from the jack to the switch (straight through or coss-over configuration)? (2) Secondly, if I were to set up two switches would it be more beneficial to run two separate cables from the wallplate or just the one and daisy chain the switches in the basement?

Thanks in advance

 

[bill001g]

Cross over cables are a thing of the long past. Most ports are gigabit which transmits and receives on all 4 pair from both ends at the same time. It does not even have the concept of crossover. 100m ports on almost every piece of equipment also uses the MDI/MDIX stuff and it will just figure it out.

So you want to use 568a or 568b on all the wall plates. It doesn't matter what pattern the patch cables that plug into the jacks all the matters is both ends of the cable are the same.

If you had a really fast internet connection....like 2.5 or 5g then maybe having 2 cables would be a benefit. In your case since it is dsl you will never even come close to use saturating the gigabit cable. Note the traffic going between machines on your switch does not go to the router it goes directly between the ports on the switch. The only traffic going over the cable to the router will be going to the internet.

Pretty much you have DSL----route--(lan)---wall jack------switch-----everything else.

Having 2 switches likely makes no difference unless you have some kind of massive file server or something. You can likely just daisy chain them and plug things in where ever you want. You will never exceed the 1gbit cable between the switches. If you actually think you might you are better off just buying a larger switch. Even if you had 2 switches with 10g ports that is still slow compared to just running it via the backplane of the switch. A switch with 16 1gbit ports can run all ports in and out at full speed all at the same time. This is called wirespeed or nonblocking. So you could in some strange lab setup have 32gbit of traffic going between ports on 16 port switch.

 

[SFXXIV]

Thank you for the quick and detailed response. You answered my question beautifully!

 

[gggplaya]

If you are already pulling cable yourself, it doesn't hurt to pull 2 for future proofing. But as Bill said, it's not necessary for what you have now.

Wall plate from the modem down to the basement patch panel is fine. From there, connect it to the router, then to the main switch. If you have a modem/router combo, then you can just connect directly from the patch panel to the switch.