Additional Ethernet port extender

[8 Wonders]

Hi, this may be an obvious question but would the R2 have any issues if I picked up a ethernet extender? Need additional space for a few more devices! Thanks 

[Netduma Fraser]

No shouldn't have any issues at all! Do keep in mind - if you're referring to a Powerline adapter that they do depend on the wiring in your walls so if you have an old home the reliability/speeds you get through it will be reduced.

[Bert]

If you just need more ports the thing you want to have is a switch.

[8 Wonders]

53 minutes ago, Netduma Fraser said:

No shouldn't have any issues at all! Do keep in mind - if you're referring to a Powerline adapter that they do depend on the wiring in your walls so if you have an old home the reliability/speeds you get through it will be reduced.

I have a powerline adaptor currently but it's more ports I need! Would the switch as mentioned above by Bert have any issues? Would the Netduma software still pick up the devices to manage them? Thanks! 

[Bert]

Connecting a switch is no issue.

 

the 4 Ethernet ports in the router are essentially a unmanaged switch. A switch is invisible to your network as it essentially just passes traffic through. You can just connect your new switch to one of the ports of the router and it should work. If you are not fussed with any sort of settings you can buy a unmanaged switch. If you want more you can buy managed for a little more money.

 

powerline is just a transport medium. So you can also plug your switch into the powerline adapter and the devices in the switch.

[8 Wonders]

6 minutes ago, Bert said:

Connecting a switch is no issue.

 

the 4 Ethernet ports in the router are essentially a unmanaged switch. A switch is invisible to your network as it essentially just passes traffic through. You can just connect your new switch to one of the ports of the router and it should work. If you are not fussed with any sort of settings you can buy a unmanaged switch. If you want more you can buy managed for a little more money.

 

powerline is just a transport medium. So you can also plug your switch into the powerline adapter and the devices in the switch.

Hi Bert, appreciate the reply! 

 

Would you be able to explain the difference between managed and unmanaged? As it stands It would be just filtering through a phillips hue bridge and my pc ethernet cable? 

 

My powerline adaptor is working fine no issues there I think the way I wrote my initial post was confusing! 

Cheers! 

[Netduma Fraser]

As above, an unmanaged switch would allow the router to see the devices as though they were connected directly to the R2 itself, therefore being able to add those devices to the Geo-Filter etc.

Managed means that the switch is not transparent and therefore the router would see the switch as a device and couldn't see the devices individually connected to the switch.

That should be fine!

[Bert]

Unmanaged just passes the traffic through. The better unmanaged switches also honor QoS tags.

 

A managed switch has a IP and you can log into it. It can perform stuff like simple QoS, port rate limiting, port duplication etc. The better ones let you set up VLANs and the even better ones can do layer 3 routing as well.

 

for just 1 pc and a hue bridge you don’t need a managed switch. Word of warning though, I would connect a hue bridge straight to the router. Because if your powerline adapters crap out you loose control over your lightning.

[Bert]

19 minutes ago, Netduma Fraser said:

As above, an unmanaged switch would allow the router to see the devices as though they were connected directly to the R2 itself, therefore being able to add those devices to the Geo-Filter etc.

Managed means that the switch is not transparent and therefore the router would see the switch as a device and couldn't see the devices individually connected to the switch.

That should be fine!

That’s not true. A managed switch is also transparant to your router, ie the device manager wil see the devices as normal. Also the switch should not show up in DumaOS device manager, probably because DumaOS detects it as a switch.

 

You’re thinking about L3 switching I think, that can route between multiple VLAN’s and IP ranges. If you route to a different internal IP range that would be the case, the devices would be invisible (assuming here, I haven’t tried this yet)

Normal home switches are Layer 2, they work off MAC addresses not IP addresses.

[8 Wonders]

Thanks for the quick replies Bert and fraser!