Connecting a Switch to domestic Netgear Wireless Router & Virgin Modem

[lcheater]

Hi,
I have a problem which i cannot see how to resolve. My current setup is that i have a 20Mb Virgin Media Broadband connection and i want to provide around 6 or 7 PC's / laptops with the 20Mb broadband without losing any of the speed. I have learnt that wireless is not the way forward for superfast speeds, especially when the signal is weak. Therefore i have fitted CAT5 to all the PC's and i have a 16 port netgear unmanaged gigabit switch.

What i am trying to achieve is to have the switch connected the modem directly but also have the wireless router connected via the switch. At the moment i have the modem connected via ethernet to the wireless router (plugged into the 'internet' port) and then i have an ethernet connection from one of the 4 ports on the router to the switch. The switch has an auto uplink detection facility. This setup works fine but the switch is restricted by the fact the wirelss router is not gigabit. What i want to do is connect the modem directly to the switch and then connect the wireless router to the switch to gain it's connection. When i have tried this, the wirelss router picks up a connection and works fine but all the PC's / laptops hardwired to the switch do not pick up a connection.

Does anyone have a solution to this problem?

 

[jimbopalmer]

the switch is restricted by the fact the wirelss router is not gigabit" How is it in any way restricted? You are not going to get more than 20 Mb from Virgin, so a 100 Mb router has 5 times the raw throughput needed. Traffic that is local to your wired network is not going through the router at all. Wireless traffic with be limited to under 54 Mb by 802.11g so the 100 Mb router will not be the bottleneck.

(The actual DHCP broadcasts and assignments will happen at 100 Mb, but that is just two packets on device power up)

You look good to go.

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[lcheater]

I always used to have the same views as you jimbopalmer. If this is the case though, why would people bother with gigabit if the data cannot be processed at gigabit speed? Another point is the router i have is now available with a 4 port gigabit switch built into it (mine is not gigabit). What advantage would this be in respect of your thoughts on this?

 

[LawnBoy]

why would people bother with gigabit

For non-internet related data transfers. 90% of the traffic on my network does not go to the internet.

There's a whole lot more to networking than SOHO rigs.

"We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes