craigthom wrote:Four extra ports. It's a five-port switch.

Math:

Before you had 4, but now you have to connect this to one of the ports, so you have 3 and connect it to one of the 5, so there's 4 left.

4-1 + 5-1 - 4 = 3

So you if you connect this, you'll have 3 extra ports, not 4.

Let's just say I had 2 PCs, and needed to get files from one to the other. Could I simply plug each PCs cable into this device (NO ROUTER AT ALL)and get the 2 PCs to 'see" each other w/o going to the router/network?

radi0j0hn wrote:Let's just say I had 2 PCs, and needed to get files from one to the other. Could I simply plug each PCs cable into this device (NO ROUTER AT ALL)and get the 2 PCs to 'see" each other w/o going to the router/network?

Yes - you just need to make sure both PCs are setup to talk on the same network. For example...

1: On both PCs setup the "netmask" as 255.255.255.0
2: On PC-1, setup it's IP address as 192.168.1.21
3: On PC-2, setup it's IP address as 192.168.1.22
4: Plug in both PCs to the switch and confirm that the switch shows link on both computers.

From PC-1, run "ping 192.168.1.22" and confirm it returns some lines like this:
Reply from 192.168.1.22: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64

From PC-2, run "ping 192.168.1.21" and confirm it returns a similar line.

From here, you'll need to check and setup the file sharing you're interested in (i.e. Windows File and Printer sharing, Unix NFS, etc). I'll let you Google or ask a more appropriate group.

Dan

radi0j0hn wrote:Let's just say I had 2 PCs, and needed to get files from one to the other. Could I simply plug each PCs cable into this device (NO ROUTER AT ALL)and get the 2 PCs to 'see" each other w/o going to the router/network?

Yes. You can use the switch to connect two PCs together with straight through ethernet cabling.

You can also connect two PCs together without a switch if you have a crossover ethernet cable.

radi0j0hn wrote:Let's just say I had 2 PCs, and needed to get files from one to the other. Could I simply plug each PCs cable into this device (NO ROUTER AT ALL)and get the 2 PCs to 'see" each other w/o going to the router/network?

Yes, John. That will work. Just be sure they're all set to the same workgroup and share one of the drives. (I would mention IP addressing, but Windows' APIPA service will assign itself a 169.x.x.x IP so your connection should work fine.)

crisss1205 wrote:Like this?

Thank you for showing a diagram - some people just can't add or visualize it. Hopefully your visual aid will solve the issue.

Can I replace my wireless G router and plug my internet cable modem directly into the D-link switch(s)?

Anyone know if these are fan cooled? I have a few gigabit switches and the fans in those PWNYes are LOUD. Not good near the home theater...

To all my fans replying to my original post:

I concede that these would be useful at a lan party where your host doesn't have enough hardware to include you.

For all other uses: it's 2011. These switches are slow as hell compared to a $20 gigaswitch.

If you EVER transfer files >500MB between your computers, you're wasting your time with this 10/100 switch.

If you ONLY use the internet and never transfer files between machines, you probably still have available ports on your router and don't need this anyway.

If you use this D-link in your home network, you won't see much real-world difference in it and wireless.
I understand $2(+5 ship) is cheap, but you'll thank me later.

theherbshack wrote:I'm guessing math wasn't your strong suit?

Or did woot! just tax your ass?

Yes, in Texas and other states with a woot!-presence, you pay tax on your purchase. 5.97 for three, 0.91 tax, and 5.00 shipping. $11.88

So this setup would REDUCE my available ports down to one, but that one port would have QUADRUPLE the bandwidth! My ferret gave me the idea,

Now, I should use the shortest possible cables to really maximize the speed, right...

Awesome WOOT, I was just going to spend upwards of $10 to buy one to finish my hard wiring, now I get 3!!!!!

In for one. Needed a cheap switch so this was convenient!

My first actual woot! purchase! Damn that's a cheap switch. I'm sure I can find a use for it.

soccersteve009 wrote:OK, so my neighbor (weird guy, with lots of creepy monkey dolls that make hideous screeching sounds, buy I digress) took down his wireless connection, and now I can't get online.

Am I right in thinking I can just get one of these, plug my computers into it? Then sneak into his house and plug a 100' ethernet cable into his internet, and then I'll be back on line?

--SoccerSteve009

Assuming he won't notice the breaking and entering and you can keep from hitting the cable with the lawn mower, you should be good.

I bought one of these from Amazon to connect some home theater gear to my network. Works great, looks good. A few spares never hurt anybody; I'm in for three.

fiasco wrote:Yes, this is exactly what you need.

If your router is wireless then this may not be what you need. This is for wired networks. If your set-up is partly wired and partly wireless this could be just what you are looking for. I have multiple computers and am thinking of getting one.

Yes. It extends your router.

markinca wrote:I'm kind of a computer-nub, but if my router at home only has 4 ports, and I'd like to add more ports, is this woot what I would need?

radi0j0hn wrote:Let's just say I had 2 PCs, and needed to get files from one to the other. Could I simply plug each PCs cable into this device (NO ROUTER AT ALL)and get the 2 PCs to 'see" each other w/o going to the router/network?

If one of your computers is fairly new it may handle autoswitching and you'll just need a cable.

With this, though, you remove all doubt.

I have two of the GB versions of the 5-Port and one GB version of the 8-Port of this Switch and I love them. They run cool and don't take much power at all. These will be great in a spot where I only have one port available for a 100Base networked items. While my main network throughout my house is GB, most of my non-computer items are only 100Base. I bought three since they would make a great gift for my less techie friends.

While wireless has made strides, nothing beats hard wiring. If the span is a few feet or 20 ft, wireless may work perfectly. However, if you have to pass through a few walls/floors or travel 50+ ft, you're going to wish you had a wired connection for consistancy.

Marginal wireless connections are high maintenance.

SinnFein wrote:Really?

Wireless G is only half-duplex, meaning that 54MB 802.11g speed only delivers 27MB each way - up and down - under ideal conditions.

This switch supports 100MB full-duplex ethernet (100MB up + 100MB down = 200MB total bandwidth).

Just to clarify, because your network grammar is horrid, networking speeds are listed in MegaBITS (Mb) and not MegaBYTES (MB). Who knew a simple capitalization changed so much. For you non-techies out there who wonder what this means to them, here's the breakdown:

1 Byte = 8 Bits, so 100,000,000 bits (100 Mb) = 12,500,000 bytes (about 11.9 MB).

Now, the other thing to look at here is the link negotiation speed. This a 10/100 switch, meaning it will operate at either 10Mbps or 100Mbps. Does that mean you get to choose the speed? No. That's automatically decided between the switch and whatever is plugged into it. These devices are built to ensure data integrity, so if for whatever reason there are a lot of data transmission errors occurring at 100Mbps, it will throttle back to 10Mbps to ensure the data is transmitted accurately.

Will that speed situation occur? Highly unlikely in a home network. So plug in, sit back, relax and enjoy your 11.9MBps data transfer rate!

I'll bet I paid closer to $50 for the one I bought years ago. Looks to be the exact same one, not that this technology has changed much.

I use it to distribute my broadband from my basement to my first floor (the few hard wired machines on the second floor have the wireless router with 4 ethernet ports serving them.

The switch serves two PCs that are used occasionally as well as a Blue-Ray player. The BlueRay uses it to stream movies from Netflix. I've never had any issues with throughput on the switch.

schipdog wrote:I get it now, router vs switch. I'm happy with my purchase (3).

Thanks, all. It's past my bedtime - nighty-nite!

I think you meant to say, "I get it now, switch plus DHCP plus NAT plus firewall vs just a switch. I'm happy with my purchase (3)."

SinnFein wrote:Really?

Wireless G is only half-duplex, meaning that 54MB 802.11g speed only delivers 27MB each way - up and down - under ideal conditions.

This switch supports 100MB full-duplex ethernet (100MB up + 100MB down = 200MB total bandwidth).

Oh, it gets worse than that. Unless you are using Ad Hoc mode (direct connection between two devices), the transmisssion is TO the Wireless Access Point (WAP) and then FROM the WAP to the other device. Unless it is a dual-channel WAP, that is halving your speed right there. So there is no simultaneous transmission (that this D-Link switch allows).

Then there are the other things that reside on the 2.2 GHz band that can step on your WiFi bliss...
Microwave ovens, most cordless phones, Bluetooth devices, wireless game consoles, baby monitors, wireless security cameras, neighbors on your same (or adjacent) WiFi band, etc, etc, etc.

How did this not sell out quickly? For this price you can put one anywhere that needs additional connections. I realize it's only 10/100 (not gigabit) but most uses don't need it, especially if the devices are simply accessing the internet rather than internal resources. Don't forget, you're only as fast as your slowest pipe. 100 mbps is plenty if your Internet connection is the typical 3, 6 or 12 mbps.

sutbard wrote:Can I replace my wireless G router and plug my internet cable modem directly into the D-link switch(s)?

Not entirely. It all depends on whether or not your cable modem will act as a DHCP host. Right now your router is acting as the DHCP host on the network, meaning that it is assigning IP addresses to everything that connects to your network. Switches like this one won't do that, as they're mainly used to increase the number of wired connections into the network with a minimal amount of cheap hardware.

If you were to switch out your wireless router for the switch, you would have to make sure that your cable modem can handle the DHCP assignments, otherwise you'll have to manually configure the IP addresses of everything on your network.

Got 3. 10.97.. Can't beat that even at a thrift store! Could sell them for a good little profit!

turbobuick86 wrote:While wireless has made strides, nothing beats hard wiring. If the span is a few feet or 20 ft, wireless may work perfectly. However, if you have to pass through a few walls/floors or travel 50+ ft, you're going to wish you had a wired connection for consistancy.

Marginal wireless connections are high maintenance.

I'm still a bit surprised at the cost of finished cat5 cables in my box stores in SC. We complain about price on HDMI wires, but dang, cat5 is still a bit pricey. And if you're going that far you have to start looking at bulk cat5 spools and fishing into walls. Plus, isn't there a new wire platform for network about to launch for HD data? I'm a bit shy of investing on any of this until I see what wins the arena match of standards.

soccersteve009 wrote:OK, so my neighbor (weird guy, with lots of creepy monkey dolls that make hideous screeching sounds, buy I digress) took down his wireless connection, and now I can't get online.

Am I right in thinking I can just get one of these, plug my computers into it? Then sneak into his house and plug a 100' ethernet cable into his internet, and then I'll be back on line?

--SoccerSteve009

As long as you plug it into an open port on his router, you'll be fine (you may want to turn off the network discovery services on your computer though).

this is PERFECT!
I ran cat6 under my house from my bedroom to my living room to a wall jack. We've had to switch the ethernet cable between the bluray and ps3 devices because i've been too lazy to go into town/refused to pay higher prices for a small switch.

If you have a single level home with a crawlspace, take an hour or two out of your day to run cable under the house. No more worrying about wireless limits, interference, and the annoying neighbor trying to get on your network. The benefit of a constant higher rate of speed is worth it. 10/100 is perfect for 99% (I made that up) of people surfing the web, unless you're that guy comcast booted and have a TB file share going on in your basement.

In for 3.

pjsimon1234 wrote:

LMAO! GRANDMA, GET OFF THE INTERNET. I NEED TO MAKE A PHONE CALL.

pjsimon1234 wrote:

So this setup would REDUCE my available ports down to one, but that one port would have QUADRUPLE the bandwidth! My ferret gave me the idea,

Now, I should use the shortest possible cables to really maximize the speed, right...

LOLOLOL, BEST SETUP EVER!! - REPPED!
Wait wait wait.. How does one REP another WOOTZ()R?

A useful device at a rock bottom price.

Yes it's not wireless but you can extend your wired network by 4 ports (since you need to use one to connect to your router).

Great for a LAN/360/PSN party!

afkrypto wrote:Not entirely. It all depends on whether or not your cable modem will act as a DHCP host. Right now your router is acting as the DHCP host on the network, meaning that it is assigning IP addresses to everything that connects to your network. Switches like this one won't do that, as they're mainly used to increase the number of wired connections into the network with a minimal amount of cheap hardware.

If you were to switch out your wireless router for the switch, you would have to make sure that your cable modem can handle the DHCP assignments, otherwise you'll have to manually configure the IP addresses of everything on your network.

This isn't a router, it's a switch. I assumed this was just adding ports to an additional router w/ ports. I would never intend it to be a router replacement.

Damn! If these were the Gigabit version, I'd be in for 3 ASAP!

This deal was AWESOME! In for 3 for $10.97!! No reason not to be! They're $16.99+$2.99s/h on NewEgg.

Great answer. That's the way I've always understood it.

Maybe you can answer another question. I once hooked two computers to one router port using a Y adapter. It worked just as well as a switch. Each pc could go to different websites and each got back the page requested. I don't get why this worked without the intellegence that a switch provides. (Unless the outgoing packets contain the MAC address and the incoming packets are simply ignored by the other pc.)

dwasifar wrote:If you tried to do that by plugging the switch directly into your cable modem or DSL modem, that would be the problem you'd have, yes.

What you need in that case is a router. What follows is a necessarily oversimplified explanation.

The router handles local addressing for your computers and other devices, using NAT (network address translation). So say your ISP currently has your IP as 234.135.246.555 (a random example I just pulled out of my you-know-where). The router tells the ISP "I am 234.135.246.555" and also tells your local computers, "You, computer A, are 192.168.1.10; and you, computer B, are 192.168.1.11". Traffic to and from the internet for computer A still appears to come to 234.135.246.555 as far as the internet at large is concerned; but the router sends it to 192.168.1.10 on your local network for computer A. Same thing happens for computer B.

Once you have that in place, you can add a switch (or switches) downstream from the router, and the router will happily deal with all the traffic coming in from all the computers on it (or them), assigning each its own local network IP, up to 255 devices - in theory at least.

Hope that helps.

pjsimon1234 wrote:

So this setup would REDUCE my available ports down to one, but that one port would have QUADRUPLE the bandwidth! My ferret gave me the idea,

Now, I should use the shortest possible cables to really maximize the speed, right...

Technically this could be done on a switch/router that supported Link Aggregation... This capability is generally available on higher end equipment though, or routers that can run DD-WRT firmware.

The speed argument has boiled down to two camps.

In one camp: "Fast enough for ordinary people."

In the other: "Don't deliberately add obsolete hardware to your network."

Both sides agree 10/100 is an obsolete standard. That's why you can buy this device for $2 right now. I understand (though don't completely agree with) the arguments that this speed is "good enough" for home users. It's true that if the 10/100 switch is only used for internet traffic, you'll never notice it; your bottleneck is your internet speed then. It's NOT true that you will never notice the difference in file transfer speeds on the local network, but I'll concede that not everyone does a lot of that. This sums up the first camp's position: "Good enough for now. Build it cheap."

Nonetheless, if you're building a network one piece at a time, it makes sense not to build it using pieces that will arbitrarily limit you later. Why put that limit on yourself? Do you KNOW that you will NEVER need gigabit speeds out of your home network - NEVER have another gigabit device, NEVER have to transfer large files locally? No? Then stay away from leftover obsolete hardware and build a fast modern network instead. That's the second camp's position: "Not good enough for long. Build it right."

Ask yourself this. When was the last time you said to yourself, "Gee, I wish I had bought a smaller hard drive?" Or, "I really regret getting so much RAM in this computer." Or, "I sure wish I had a slower CPU." You never do. Local network speed is another one of these things. One day you'll need it, and you'll wish you had it without having to rebuy your network hardware.

Thanks for the info on the switcher used between two PCs. I do a load of video for a non-profit and I am talking about setting up TWO PCs sop I can work on editing on one while the other "renders" the edited video. This may work!