Question TP-LINK SWITCH

[Kinnyr90]

Hi,

Okay so I have a 2.5 Gbps connection from my ISP. So I have qa 2.5 Gbps cable modem. Store bought. I also have a netgear Rax120 Nighthawk router. So I'm using the Multi Gig ethernet port. That it came with. Going from the 2.5 GBPS (Yellow port on the back of the modem to the Mulit gig Ethernet port on the back of the router. I'm connected all through ethernet cables, but, I still have wireless enabled in the router settings because I'm using 5g with My motto edge 2021 Cell phone for the phone internet at home. Now I also have a TP-LINK 5 port 2.5 GBPS Port switch.

Now I'm using a 2.5 GBPS USB ETHERNET ADAPTER as my External Ethernet adapter.

1 My first question is... Is an external ethernet controller like the one I mentioned faster or slower than an internal 2.5GBPS Card? Or is there no difference in speed or transfer rate? I have it plugged into a usb 3.0 on my desktop?

2 My TP-LINK 5 port switch with 2.5 GBPS. I plug one cable into a 2.5 GBPS From the switch to the back of the Plugable 2.5 GBPS Ethernet Adapter. But when I do this using the switch I'm getting disconnects from the Internet. At random times My network says Unidentified network yes I tried reinstalling drivers , And Hitting disabled on the nic and reinabling it and that works but only for a little while. My question is do some settings have to be tweaked in the router in order for the switch to work properly with my network. Like say if I disabled everything Wireless/wifi in the router since I'm hard wired for everything?

3. I know that I have 2 ethernet cables plugged into my switch. The 1 ethernet cable that is going from the switch back to the router is plugged into a 1 gig port. Because I couldn't plug it into any port above1 GBPS Since the router only has the Multi gig ethernet port. And that is already being used for the cable modem. My question is? Isn't it true that inorder to get the full 2.5 GBPS offered by my cable company or at least more than what I'm getting now. Doesn't this ethernet cable also have to be plugged into a 2.5 GBPS port on the router? Even though I don't have any other 2.5 GBPS port on the router. And if it dopes in order for me to get the better speed? What should I do? Should I by another router that has 2 Multi gig ports on it? Or can I get a dongle plug that is capable of 2.5 GBPS and plug it into the 1 GBPS port on the router making it 2.5 GBPS.

4.Or could the issue be with the adavnced settings of the plugable 2.5 GBPS Usb to Ethernet adapter? Which uses realtek software that shows up in my network and sharing of windows 11. Like where Flow control is and the duplex speed and all the power saving options are and recieve side scailing and all that?And where you put your custom dns servers. (1.1.1.1) (1.0.0.1)

Thank you so much!! For putting up with my lengthy email.

 

[bill001g]

So before you go to lots of effort consider moving your internet connection back to 1gbit. It will save you lots of money and you will not have to replace all your equipment.
You need to evaluate what do you actually need 2.5g internet for. How much downloading of files do you actually do in a month and how many minutes does it save you. Only file downloads are helped by these real fast internet connection. Things like netflix and games only use what they need and having extra does not improve performance. In addition many sites have artificial limitation to prevent people with fast connects from causing over use of a servers. Many times this is even under 1gbit.

Not sure why you are having issue with a usb ethernet. There is some overhead because of the extra USB data conversion layer but you can get 10gbit ports that will work on USB3. It might be some issue between that device and and the switch. Even though cat5e cables will work at 2.5g for short distances I would always use cat6a for connections above 1gbit.

You have discovered the marking guys scam on 2.5g routers. Sure it has a 2.5g wan port but the only way you can use it all is if you have 2 machines running at 1gbit and a third running at 500mbps. Total together all your machines can run 2.5g but no single machine can get that speed.
You must have a router that has 2.5 g wan and 2.5g lan ports. These are not real common and tend to be rather expensive. It take quite a bit of compute power to do the nat function at those speeds even when it is using a hardware nat assist.

I think asus sells a router than can do this. Maybe there is a cable modem/router combo unit that can take 2.5 wan over the coax and 2.5g lan over ethernet. I know fiber gateways are getting much more common with faster than 2.5g. ATT keeps bothering me to upgrade to their 5gbit plan ...for "only" $180 a month

 

[Kinnyr90]

Okay thank you so much for your advice it's really going to help.

Take Care!