Does a network need a router ?

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It sounds to me as if it does but maybe it does not

Does all traffic pass to and through the router and then back out to its destination

Or if I have switches and one machine is accessing another does it just go through the switch ?

And how much does a switch slow things down ?

Thanks

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

A network as standard does not need a router, it only needs a router if it needs to "route" packets to addresses outside it's own network (subnet).

A switch simply determines which machines (MAC addresses) the packet should be forwarded to.

If you are just connecting two machines together adding a switch can technically slow things down (although probably not enough to actually matter).

HTH

 

[GravexWebServices]

You usually build a network internally using a switch. If you need to access the outside world, then the switch would then need to connect to a router in order to do this.

Usually, if you use a 10/100Mbps switch and the computers aren't that far away, you won't notice much (if any) latency. Switches are cool because they give each connected node to the switch it's own 100Mbps bandwidth. A hub, on the other hand, would share this out.

 

[Posilan]

It sounds to me as if it does but maybe it does not

Does all traffic pass to and through the router and then back out to its destination

Or if I have switches and one machine is accessing another does it just go through the switch ?

And how much does a switch slow things down ?

Thanks

You don't need a switch no - if you just want to long two devices together, you can use a crossover cat5 cable which effectively emulates a hub/switch.

A switch on your network should not necessarily slow things down but you will always be limited to the speed of the slowest device (gigabit network cards will slow to 100mbps if you dont have a gigabit switch, and likewise if you have a gigabit switch and one of the PC's have 100mpbs nic, it will again slow the connection between the two to 100mbps).

Steve

 

[astutiumRob]

It all depends on your definition and setup of "the network"

Does all traffic pass to and through the router and then back out to its destination

In a domestic setup - generally yes.

Or if I have switches and one machine is accessing another does it just go through the switch

Depends on the switch, vlan configuration etc, but possibly

And how much does a switch slow things down ?

Good switches work at "wire speed" so have no appreciable impact

A simple office/domestic setup would be
machines > switch > router > outside-world

 

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It is for several machines at work - that all work but we have one at the end of a long wire and I have been trying to speed things up generally so have been putting in Netgear Gigabit switches but the router (Draytek) was only 10/100 but with one gigabit output and I was thinking to myself - ah that router must be a slower spot on those 10/100's

But then if it does not go through the router for normal machine to machine communication then that is not an issue for the link that I am trying to speed up since it is one machine talking direct to another through the switches

Seeing the speed on the netgear switches using the lights has been good because I have found that a POE injector on the line I want to speed up is 100 only so I shall get rid of that and run a power extension cable to the device instead

Thanks for your help - I think I get it now

 

[Posilan]

It is for several machines at work - that all work but we have one at the end of a long wire and I have been trying to speed things up generally so have been putting in Netgear Gigabit switches but the router (Draytek) was only 10/100 but with one gigabit output and I was thinking to myself - ah that router must be a slower spot on those 10/100's

But then if it does not go through the router for normal machine to machine communication then that is not an issue for the link that I am trying to speed up since it is one machine talking direct to another through the switches

Seeing the speed on the netgear switches using the lights has been good because I have found that a POE injector on the line I want to speed up is 100 only so I shall get rid of that and run a power extension cable to the device instead

Thanks for your help - I think I get it now

One final thing to check is the total throughput of the switch. A lot of lower end gigabit switches are unable to provide full throughput - so that could still be your problem if other things don't fix it.

The switch should have a throughput (sometimes called switching bandwidth) of 1 gigabit x ( 2 x number of ports) - so a 24 port gigabit switch should have a total throughput of 48 gigabit (to allow for full duplex).

Steve