One 16 port switch or two 8 port switches each with dedicated line to same router?

[Golfx]

Hi all. I’m wondering if there is any disadvantage in my using two 8 port switches If each has a dedicated line (cat 6a) back to the same router?

When i received my Kaleidescape strato C and compact terra 12TB my current 8 port switch was full. So I had the dealer put them on a new additional 8 port switch instead of using a new consolidated 16 port switch.

My thinking was I would use a separate dedicated line back to the router which might increase download speeds plus keeping the strato and terra on the same switch as well.

My router is ASUS zenwifi mesh et8 6E. I’m hooked into main router node connected to a 2.5G modem/1G line.

Would I be better off with just the one 16 port switch (unmanaged aracknis)? Or is there no difference? Just checking….

 

[Substance]

I am assuming these are gigabit unmanaged switches. You have routing done in software in your zenwifi which has 3x gigabit LAN ports.

Short answer, I would say 2x8 will have better performance than 1x16 in some scenarios.

Long answer, every package will need to travel to the router, the gigabit trunk port will be the bottle neck. In 2x8 setup, you have 2x gigabit LAN ports for trunk. If your Terra is downloading a movie, it will saturate the trunk port on one of your 8 port switches. The devices on the second 8 port switch have a gigabit trunk port unaffected from this. In this scenario, your bottleneck is the processing power of the zenwifi. Looking at its specs, it should handle multi-gigabits of routing without issue.

 

[Golfx]

I am assuming these are gigabit unmanaged switches. You have routing done in software in your zenwifi which has 3x gigabit LAN ports.

Short answer, I would say 2x8 will have better performance than 1x16 in some scenarios.

Long answer, every package will need to travel to the router, the gigabit trunk port will be the bottle neck. In 2x8 setup, you have 2x gigabit LAN ports for trunk. If your Terra is downloading a movie, it will saturate the trunk port on one of your 8 port switches. The devices on the second 8 port switch have a gigabit trunk port unaffected from this. In this scenario, your bottleneck is the processing power of the zenwifi. Looking at its specs, it should handle multi-gigabits of routing without issue.

Oh well thank you for your reply. I thought I might be ok with two 8s but it is reassuring to read your reply.

 

[MikeKobb]

Yeah, I think in this scenario, you should really be fine. Where you'd potentially run into performance issues would be if you had components on Switch A that needed to talk to components on Switch B at very high bandwidth. All of that traffic would be funneled down to a single gigabit connection to your router, and then back up out to the other switch. On a single 16-port switch, theoretically any two ports can have a full gigabit connection between them (assuming that the switch's total bandwidth can accommodate this).

If what you have on your second switch is the Terra and the Strato C, then they benefit from having a path between them that doesn't have to go through the router, and as Substance said, your Terra can pretty much max out the connection to the router. That might leave your other components on the other switch better able to access the Internet, although if your actual Internet connection is only gigabit, you could actually potentially starve out your other components by fully saturating your Internet connection.

On my gigabit fiber, I have my Terra set to cap its downloads at 900Mbps. So, that's always an option for you if you find that movie downloads are causing performance problems for other Internet services.

 

[Substance]

Yeah, I think in this scenario, you should really be fine. Where you'd potentially run into performance issues would be if you had components on Switch A that needed to talk to components on Switch B at very high bandwidth. All of that traffic would be funneled down to a single gigabit connection to your router, and then back up out to the other switch. On a single 16-port switch, theoretically any two ports can have a full gigabit connection between them (assuming that the switch's total bandwidth can accommodate this).

If what you have on your second switch is the Terra and the Strato C, then they benefit from having a path between them that doesn't have to go through the router, and as Substance said, your Terra can pretty much max out the connection to the router. That might leave your other components on the other switch better able to access the Internet, although if your actual Internet connection is only gigabit, you could actually potentially starve out your other components by fully saturating your Internet connection.

On my gigabit fiber, I have my Terra set to cap its downloads at 900Mbps. So, that's always an option for you if you find that movie downloads are causing performance problems for other Internet services.

I believe since these are dummy switches, even components talking to each other on the same switch will need to go to the router first to be routed to the correct MAC address. The trunk port would be the bottleneck still.

For your last paragraph, I upgraded my fiber to 2.5G to never throttle down the Terra

 

[MikeKobb]

For your last paragraph, I upgraded my fiber to 2.5G to never throttle down the Terra

Nice. I'm about to install 10Gbit fiber. I'll need to make some changes within my other network hardware to take full advantage, but it should be cool.

I believe since these are dummy switches, even components talking to each other on the same switch will need to go to the router first to be routed to the correct MAC address. The trunk port would be the bottleneck still.

I do not believe that's correct. For example, you can set up a couple of components with static IP addresses within the same subnet, plug both of them into the same switch, and they will be able to communicate with one another even if there's no router present at all. Even unmanaged (Layer 2) switches know the MAC addresses of every device plugged into their ports. When a device wants to send data to another device in its same subnet, and it knows the IP address but not the MAC address of the destination device, it can send a broadcast ARP message asking which device has the desired IP address. Assuming that the target device is on the same switch, it will respond to that ARP, and from then on all traffic is directed according to MAC addresses which the switch knows how to deal with.

Here's the first little article on the subject I found with a quick Google search. Layer 3 vs Layer 2 Switching