Extending a network
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Hi I have a belkin wireless modem / router. It has four wired ports which are all in use. Is it possible to add a 8 port hub to this? I know less than nothing about network hardware and googling is just throwing up new wireless modems. I am running one of the wires from the hub into the loft and back down into the lads bedroom. I want to, ideally, plug that into another hub in the loft, so I can then run 8 more devices from it. (actually 7 more, as I still need to connect the lads machine up). Is this as easy as just buying a hub? The wireless access in the house is rubbish, as the study is at one end of the house, the house is old and all walls are either 9" or 4" solid. Cheers Malcolm
We violated nature and our children have to pay the penalty Don't go near the water children... Johnny Cash - 1974
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Hi I have a belkin wireless modem / router. It has four wired ports which are all in use. Is it possible to add a 8 port hub to this? I know less than nothing about network hardware and googling is just throwing up new wireless modems. I am running one of the wires from the hub into the loft and back down into the lads bedroom. I want to, ideally, plug that into another hub in the loft, so I can then run 8 more devices from it. (actually 7 more, as I still need to connect the lads machine up). Is this as easy as just buying a hub? The wireless access in the house is rubbish, as the study is at one end of the house, the house is old and all walls are either 9" or 4" solid. Cheers Malcolm
We violated nature and our children have to pay the penalty Don't go near the water children... Johnny Cash - 1974
Using a hub in such a sense should work fine. However using a switch would be better. A hub sends alla data going through it to all other computers/devices while a switch sends the data to the corresponding computer/device. Switches are therefore faster (under larger amounts of load) and more secure. I would never use a hub today. You can connect multiple switches/hubs after each other (series) or besides each other (parallel) depending on where you want the new ports. :)
//Johannes
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Hi I have a belkin wireless modem / router. It has four wired ports which are all in use. Is it possible to add a 8 port hub to this? I know less than nothing about network hardware and googling is just throwing up new wireless modems. I am running one of the wires from the hub into the loft and back down into the lads bedroom. I want to, ideally, plug that into another hub in the loft, so I can then run 8 more devices from it. (actually 7 more, as I still need to connect the lads machine up). Is this as easy as just buying a hub? The wireless access in the house is rubbish, as the study is at one end of the house, the house is old and all walls are either 9" or 4" solid. Cheers Malcolm
We violated nature and our children have to pay the penalty Don't go near the water children... Johnny Cash - 1974
So, the router is in the study and three devices are attached to it? Plus one cable that now goes to another part of the house? And you want to add a hub in the middle? Should work ok, but might only offer limited network access. As someone already explained, a hub basically is a multi-port repeater. What goes in on one port comes out on all other ports. This also means that a hub will only run with the lowest common denominator of all devices in the network. If there is an IP-TV box, that MIGHT mean 10 Mbit / Half Duplex. A switch, however, is a multiport bridge, meaning that it at least does basic OSI/ISO layer 2 routing and mixing. It will remember the port a device is attached to and send all packets addressed to a device to its specific port. A switch also has a backplane that offers seperate throughput for all ports, meaning that port 1 can talk to port 3 with gigabit connectivity, while ports 2 and 4 get data at 100 MBit/s delivered from a gigabit link on port 5... etc. If you think that several of the devices attached on the breakout switch might be used at once, it might be no bad idea to set them to a bitrate one level slower that the uplink to your router (e.g. router<->switch: Gbit, switch<->devices: 100Mbit). Oh, and you usually will only have six additional ports available. You will probably need one port to act as an uplink to your router.
Cheers, Sebastian -- "If it was two men, the non-driver would have challenged the driver to simply crash through the gates. The macho image thing, you know." - Marc Clifton