Advice Needed For LAN Setup

indianmojojojo said:

No offense, OP wanted a cost effective option, splitters were never bad from personal experience but i know most networking/Voip providers were always against this. I tell this from experience working in VoIP and networking industry as early as 2011.

Switch is not as good as a router for limiting broadcasts

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Sorry dude, but you're out of your depth. I'm a network specialist and I do this for a living, I can assure you using a splitter is just an awful idea, to even suggest it shows you don't really know what you're talking about. You need to learn about collision domains and half-duplex, full-duplex, you would soon see using a splitter is just a ridiculous suggestion in 2022.

If you're doing this to learn then it's ok.

If you're doing this for a serious money making project, I think it's better to buy VPSs or dedicated server from a good provider to focus only on your main project.

I'm familiar with Cisco routers and switches, the best plan is to get a switch that support routing and vlans -> Connect this switch to your internet router.

This type of switches allows you to create many networks and you can connect them using the routing capability.

You can find other brands than Cisco with the same functionalities and a simple web interface for configuration.

homenet said:

Sorry dude, but you're out of your depth. I'm a network specialist and I do this for a living, I can assure you using a splitter is just an awful idea, to even suggest it shows you don't really know what you're talking about. You need to learn about collision domains and half-duplex, full-duplex, you would soon see using a splitter is just a ridiculous suggestion in 2022.

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This was a simple advice from the business side of it to test as the OP wanted to test waters, but the deeper one goes and narrow the vision gets which may not work sometimes to run a business(No offence)

I told this then and i tell this now splitters are good enough and what is collision domains and half-duplex, full-duplex? In simple words i already said there is slight reduction in speed

indianmojojojo said:

This was a simple advice from the business side of it to test as the OP wanted to test waters, but the deeper one goes and narrow the vision which may not work sometimes to run a business(No offence)

I told this then and i tell this now splitters are good enough and what is collision domains and half-duplex, full-duplex? In simple words i already said there is slight reduction in speed

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Lol, like I said, you've no idea what you're talking about if you think a splitter is just about a slight reduction in speed.

Algo said:

If you're doing this for a serious money making project, I think it's better to buy VPSs or dedicated server from a good provider to focus only on your main project.

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I already have 16 local VPSs that I'm using.... I don't think ditching them all and renting VPSes is the solution I'm looking for
I just wanted to shift from them using the WLAN to a wired ethernet cable based setup.

homenet said:

Lol, like I said, you've no idea what you're talking about if you think a splitter is just about a slight reduction in speed.

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i never said it only reduces the speed . All am saying is splitter is a cheaper alternative to test waters

noellarkin said:

I feel that might reduce the power usage of these systems, I can disable the WiFi
2) improve transfer and internet speeds + stability
Am I correct in these assumptions?

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1.If all your 16 machines aren't laptops, it won't make any significant difference when it comes to power usage. Wired is efficient but for mere 16 NICs the power savings won't be enough to compensate cost of new hardware.

2. Wired can significantly improve transfer rates yes. The max you can get on a 4x4 WiFi router running on 802.11ac can give you a max real world bandwidth of 2.5gbps. While you can get 10gbps on an ethernet (tho it's expensive)

Whether you should move to wired or even upgrade your existing wireless hardware will depend on what you do with your vps. Do you transfer a lot of files across your machines for the bandwidth to be useful? Does latency matter for any reason?

A better upgrade then moving to wired instead would be to upgrading your wireless hardware. Get better network cards and more/better routers.

indianmojojojo said:

This was a simple advice from the business side of it to test as the OP wanted to test waters, but the deeper one goes and narrow the vision gets which may not work sometimes to run a business(No offence)

I told this then and i tell this now splitters are good enough and what is collision domains and half-duplex, full-duplex? In simple words i already said there is slight reduction in speed

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This is just a wild guess on my part, but perhaps if I'm using an ethernet splitter cable, I might get issues with TightVNC if two machines get allocated the same IP? No idea about this tbh just a guess.

Ashk881 said:

Do you transfer a lot of files across your machines for the bandwidth to be useful?

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once a day. They sync back up with my main PC to make backups once every 24 hrs. The rest of the day they're just busy botting accounts ie primarily internet use not file sharing.

noellarkin said:

This is just a wild guess on my part, but perhaps if I'm using an ethernet splitter cable, I might get issues with TightVNC if two machines get allocated the same IP? No idea about this tbh just a guess.

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you need to reconfigure my advice was only based on the fact that its cheaper to test waters with splitters before investing on switches.

indianmojojojo said:

i never said it only reduces the speed . All am saying is splitter is a cheaper alternative to test waters

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But this is a simple solution, you dont need to "test the waters", what you're suggesting is literally the worst thing OP could do right now, not to mention for an extra few bucks, he could have a 48 port Gigabit switch. I've already shown how cheap a second hand switch is from Ebay.

Ashk881 said:

1.If all your 16 machines aren't laptops, it won't make any significant difference when it comes to power usage. Wired is efficient but for mere 16 NICs the power savings won't be enough to compensate cost of new hardware.

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yep they're all old low-power-consumption laptops I salvaged and repurposed I was hoping to cut down on their power usage even more by eliminating wifi.

noellarkin said:

once a day. They sync back up with my main PC to make backups once every 24 hrs. The rest of the day they're just busy botting accounts ie primarily internet use not file sharing.

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I don't think an upgrade would be worth the costs then. What bandwidth do you get for your internet connection? Can you manage 100mbps across each of your VPSes.

Ashk881 said:

I don't think an upgrade would be worth the costs then. What bandwidth do you get for your internet connection? Can you manage 100mbps across each of your VPSes.

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net connection's 1000 mbps

I'm no expert, but I feel as though cable connections will always be superior to wireless.

With that in mind, my main internet router has 2 ethernet cables plugged in, with each going to a different room.

In one room I have 1 PC, connected to the wall socket with an ethernet cable.

In the other room I have a switch with 8 ports connected to the wall socket via ethernet cable, and 4 PCs connected to the switch with ethernet cables.

This is the switch I use, and I paid about $30 bucks for it - https://eu.dlink.com/rs/sr/products/dgs-1008d-8-port-10-100-1000mbps-gigabit-switch

I'm really happy with the switch. It arrived, it worked straight away plug-and-play, and I never had an issues with it whatsoever. And my computers are all running perfectly fine, even under heavy load.

My other 2 little lap tops and my main work lap top, those are connected with wireless. Because really, the lap tops don't really have the firepower to utilize a lot of internet. A lap top runs 12 browsers of a site that's not too demanding, a PC runs 60 of them on a site that is demanding.

And that's how I do it, and it all works fine.


p.s it helps that I have really strong internet. Go back a year or two and I had 10MB ADSL, and it was not able to handle HALF of my current needs. As I was scaling, I actually had to put 1 of my PCs, my best PC, at a family member's place because my internet simply couldn't handle it. Yeah I know, upgrade your internet. Well I was renting back then like a piece of shit, so it was complicated, really complicated. Then I bought my own place and put the internet that God uses (or at least his employees) and I never had a slow moment since, no matter how much I threw at it.

homenet said:

But this is a simple solution, you dont need to "test the waters", what you're suggesting is literally the worst thing OP could do right now, not to mention for an extra few bucks, he could have a 48 port Gigabit switch. I've already shown how cheap a second hand switch is from Ebay.

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I give it to you. The purpose of my point was diluted long ago. I merely said test one port one splitter.

I am going to call it a day on this topic.

But i do have a question. Why are you using so many machines?

Couldnt you sell 10 of them and replace them with 3 stronger ones? Get the same output, but save on space and headache and cables etc.

Like my first 2 PCs that i bought have ryzen 3, only 2 ram slots, not so great motherboard. I could EASILY replace them with 1 PC which will give me more productivity than the 2 combined.

Granted, i do like a certain separation of work. This PC does this, that PC does that. Its nice and cozy.

But at the end of the day, the space saved, having less cables going all over, one less mouse, less keyboard, less monitor, less anydesk to connect to. Yeah, less stronger PCs over more weaker ones is the path i prefer.

noellarkin said:

I already have 16 local VPSs that I'm using.... I don't think ditching them all and renting VPSes is the solution I'm looking for
I just wanted to shift from them using the WLAN to a wired ethernet cable based setup.

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So one 24 ports layer 3 switch that support vlans and routing can be enough for your case.

Scorpion Ghost said:

Couldnt you sell 10 of them and replace them with 3 stronger ones? Get the same output, but save on space and headache and cables etc.

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The 16 laptops likely are too old to salvage any value out of them.

I get OPs case. I have a 10 year old ThinkPad that works perfectly fine and I use it now as a headless server. Thing runs like an Atom with 2gb ddr3 ram but it works perfectly fine. Yet I couldn't get someone to pay even $30 for it.

You would easily get a bunch of machines like this for $400, boot a lightweight os like Puppy Linux or Alpine, hook them up in a network and you now have a small cluster of salvaged computers.

You can't sell them easily, and a modern equivalent will easily cost more than $500.

I'm no expert but recently did this myself in our house. I wanted to hardwire the (ethernet cables) internet conection due to the fact that my kids play online a lot and in one bedroom the signal keeps dropping via WiFi, it doesn't matter which router or ISP we use, it still drops.

I purchased a simple NetGear 8 switch (I know you need more) brand new, I didn't realise you could buy second hand ones so cheap!

Internet speeds have increased despite my children gaming and watching Netflix etc while some TVs run of WiFi with no problems (except we have cables running everywhere and will be put under the floor as each room is redecorated).

This was the simplest and easiest option in my opinion.