LAN

[YianniFragos]

Hello I am setting up a lan of 10 computers in a school in a new room and i am a technical assistant. I have a Cisco switch and my 10 computers and the wall jack is properly working with internet connection for any PC that is individually connected. Can i connect the switch to the wall jack and then connect the PC's to that switch or what should I do? Thank you in advanced!

 

[robertjo24]

There are differences between want you can do, and what you should do. Technically, yes you can add a switch in a room by connecting to a wall jack. The most correct way would be to run new LAN cables back to the core of your network and individually connect each computer that way.
The second way would be wireless.
If you have to go with a switch in the room, it might be a good idea to see if the main switch has an uplink port, and connect your new switch to that port of the existing switch. When you start adding switches downstream of your main network, it can cause you some issues, and really opens up the possibility of loops on the LAN.

 

[wires]

There is no problem adding a switch for the situation like you describe. In fact if I were doing a layout on limited money (all schools I know of) and wanted to put 10+ computers in every room I'd run 2 cables (TP or fiber) from each room back to a hefty centrally located switch. In each room I'd have a switch or wireless access point (or both) to handle all the connections.

I know this will cause some groans but if you have 20-40 classrooms (normal school) and want 15-25 connections per room (normal class size) then 300-1000 connections in a com closet gets complicated and expensive real fast. I have little doubt that all students will need a network connection for most academic subjects in the fairly near future.

I'm a great believer in managed switches. Managed switches give a lot of flexibility in configuring a network. You can trunk ports to increase bandwidth and set up VLANS to partition you network. One thing to keep an eye on is Spanning Tree Protocol. With Win7 and it's network identification you need to turn off STP on ports that just go to a W7 machine so it can ID the gateway MAC address faster. Any ports that go to another switch should have STP turned on.

"Uplink" ports are vestiges of the days before auto crossover (auto-MDIX). If one of the switches you have has a port labeled like that it certainly does not hurt to use it but it is likely the switch is fairly old.

 

[YianniFragos]

Thank You for the help but i am not rewiring a major part of the school and i dont have the option to run the cables back to the main closet. I am creating an addition to the already existent network. All i have access to is one wall jack that has connection to the network and to the internet but i have to add 10 devices to the already existent network.

 

[wires]

So connect the switch to the existing wall jack and the 10 computers to the switch. Should work fine just like I said in my last post.

If the link light does light up on the port connected to the wall plate you will need to crossover the Tx and Rx lines using a crossover cable, uplink port or uplink pushbutton. Like I said above most modern switches take care of this for you.