LAN Party with ethernet switch without internet.

[94jamespark]

I have a school club, but our school does not allow any wireless networks within the school perimeters.
Wired are allowed, but wireless are not allowed.

I plan to host a LAN party for my club, and we will have about 20-30 people.
We cannot have any internet access, and I have not touched a wired stuff, so I need help ...

* There is a 24 ethernet switch, and if I buy one, and suppose I buy another 24 ethernet switch (I know there is a 48 ethernet switch), can I connect those two 24 ethernet switches to make 47 ports?
* For a LAN party without internet access, can we use an ethernet switch or do we use something else?
* For 20-30 people, it is recommended that we have a ~8mbps upload speed. When ethernet switches advertise 10mbps, is that upstream & downstream? When all the computers are hooked to 24 ports, does the advertised 10mbps go lower? (I have seen 100/10 mbps, and I don't know what that means)

Thanks.

 

[john-b691]

Actually you get a 46 port switch since you waste a port on each.
Unless you plan to manually assign IP addresses and such or let it use the microsoft default strange addresses you will need something to act as a DHCP server. Any pc will do or you can use a router.

I would buy 2 24 port 10/100 switches with gig uplinks. many times these have 22 10/100 ports and 2 10/100/1000. You want to hook the switches together with a gig port. You would place any common server on the other gig port. You could use 100m but then any traffic between machines on the 2 switches would have to share this 100m. It may be enough though depending what you are actually doing.

Almost all switches now days can run at what is called full wire speed. That means the backplane of the switch is fast enough for all port to be both transmitting and receiving at maximum rate at the same time. This means a 24 port switch with all ports running at 100m would have 24*100m*2 --- 4.8g/sec It is multiplied by 2 since the ports and send and receive 100m at the same time. This is the key number you want to look for that shows how fast a switch is.

 

[94jamespark]

Thanks. Also, what are the difference between the modern switch and the old switch?
We are looking for a cheap ones, and some used are around $30, but some go up to $200. These are all 10/100 switches.

Is there any switches that you would recommend for a very low price?
We do not want wireless (school will not approve anything that generates a wireless hotspot), and all we want is a decent speed of constant 7mbps+ connection from "server" computer to all other connected computers. All other computers to other computers do not need a strong connection. Also all of the computers have to be wired.

 

[john-b691]

If you are going with used equipment you should be fine with commercial grade stuff that is even 10yrs old. If you can get it for free it will work in most cases.

For just over $50 you can get a number of brand new switches that will work fine. They are the off brands like tp-link,trendnet,buffalo etc etc. They all pretty much use the same parts inside. For $120 you can get 24 port 10/100/1000 switches from these vendors.

Been a while since I looked at this stuff but it appears nobody even sell switches that are not full port speed anymore so I would suspect anything you find will meet your needs if you are buying it new.

 

[94jamespark]

Best answer selected by 94jamespark.