Adding Ethernet Ports with a Network Switch

foreign [Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers.com this time we're going to add some extra ethernet ports to my home network by installing an unmanaged network switch so if there are no more free ethernet sockets on the back of your Wi-Fi router and you'll need to plug in another device or if you have a room with a single ethernet socket and you need more ethernet sockets then that is a problem we're going to fix foreign here is the network switch that I purchased which is a tp-link TL sg105s and this is a 5 Port gigabit on managed switch for which I paid 12 pounds 97 here in the UK with the price starting from about 15 in the United States however there are lots of Alternatives available with another very popular brand for networking Hardware being D-Link now when purchasing a switch there are three key things to consider firstly how many new network sockets do you require this model for example comes with either five ports as here but you can get eight ports 1624 or even 48 ports on a version of this hardware and as we'll see you'll end up with one or two few reports from a number on the switch secondly you need to select a speed and for most home networks today I would recommend a one gigabit switch like this rather than device limited to 10 or 100 megabits you can also now buy 2.5 and even 10 gigabit switches but these do cost considerably more so I'd only go higher than one gigabit if you have computers and storage devices with 2.5 or 10 gigabit Ethernet ports and you really need the extra speed for things like accessing local network storage in this context it's also worth noting that globally average Broadband speeds are no more than a few hundred megabits so a one gigabit switch like this really is fine for connecting devices to the internet in most homes thirdly you need to select the type of switch a switch is come in three variants firstly there are unmanaged switches which are simple Plug and Play devices that enable computers and peripherals with a network connection to communicate secondly we have managed switches which can be configured using software for example to create private virtual local area networks within your network and finally there are smart switches also known as self-managed switches which have limited configuration options and unless you have complex networking requirements for most homes I would recommend a non-managed switch like this one as no configuration is required so that's our bringing stunning The Knife and open this thing up just cut through there cellophane so we can get inside simple unboxing other than that I think but always exciting to open up new computer kit there we are and inside here a piece of cardboard it looks like the suspense is killing us there it is here is the uh the switch itself in a nice little metal box nicer solid piece of stuff that very good down here we have a little manual I think you may look at that you never know we have a power adapter obviously quite important without that it won't work and finally we have summer rubber feet I think which we can probably put on the base of this because you might want to wall mount this or you might want to just sit it on your desk this is a device which has got no fan inside it this is a silent device if you are selecting a network switch do think about that you want one without a fan if it's going to be inside it may make a lot of noise and also think about the power rating this draws just under 2.5 watts and today when you've got devices on all the time like a network switch you do want to think about the power rating finally it's worth noting that here and quite commonly there isn't an ethernet cable included in this box we haven't missed anything over here so you may well want to get an ethernet cable a patch lead like this to connect the switch to your Wi-Fi router as we're doing in a second and if you are getting a cable make sure it's at least Cat5e and ideally Cat6 like we've got here or with the proper tools you can make your own cables as I demonstrated in my video on wiring ethernet extensions anyway here I've got this pre-made 0.5 meter patch cable so let's now go and connect this switch to my network foreign router or as we generally say in the UK router but however we pronounce it this is the device that connects to the phone line that provides my internet connection and which communicates with Hardware on my network using Wi-Fi or ethernet and before people start typing in the comments I'm aware that technically this is a gateway device that includes a modem a router or router and a wireless access point anyway in terms of this video the most important thing is that if we look around the back we can see that all four ethernet ports are in use so it's not possible to plug anything else into this device we don't have any free sockets and this of course is why I've got a switch so if we bring in our switch like this and it's all powered up I've got the adapter connected all we need to do is to take our cable and plug it into on the ports on the switch like that and the other end has to plug into the router or the router we haven't got a free socket so what we have to do is to remove something already plugged in like that and then we can now plug this Cable in here like this and there we are we've now got our switch connected to my network and I've now got four extra ethernet ports available except of course I haven't really because if I reach down here on the floor I can find this cable which was plugged in over here a second ago so this really has to be plugged in like this because if it isn't what I was connected to this isn't going to work anymore so actually by fitting a five port which we've ended up with three extra ports many people will tell you you always lose one port when you connect a switch because it's the one that connects it to your router your routing device but in practice if all your ports are full here before you start you've always got to plug something back in again so you'll gain two less ports than a number on the switch oh and if you're wondering on a basic unmanaged switch like this it shouldn't matter which socket you select to connect it to the router although it's common to use socket one as I've done here and it's always worth checking the guide or manual and at the other end you can connect the switch to any ethernet port on your router providing that you don't use the WAN socket dedicated to your incoming phone or cable connection or to a separate modem and to make everything super clear here we have a diagram showing how we've connected the switch to my home network and I can now add more computers and peripherals to the network using the switch now having explained how to set up a switch connected directly to a Wi-Fi router this isn't actually how I'm going to use mine so we'll use the magic of filmmaking to put everything back how it was and I've done this because one of the cables connected to my router actually plugs into a wall socket that I fitted in my wiring ethernet extensions video and which in turn connects to a cable that goes outside to my garage and it's terminated in this socket here and on occasions I want to plug several devices in in this location so what I'm going to do is to take out this wire that currently goes into my test rig PC put in the patch lead like this if I can get it in there we are and the other end of this lead is going to plug into the switch which is here all powered up so let's plug in the cable like this to connect it to the rest of the network and I can now plug back in my test PC and go up that end like that and I can also plug in more computers like this one like that which will come to life you'll see them communicating with little lights coming on on the device very exciting because I've now got more ethernet ports available in the room where I make my explaining computers videos and to show you what this looks like in terms of a total Network here's a diagram or we've basically done here is to take the switch and put it at the end of a very long extension which gives me more ethernet ports I can use in a remote location now I'm sure that some of you are wondering if the switch will bottleneck Network performance however using a modern network switch it's not the case that bandwidth is simply divided so for example just because this switch has a one gigabit connection to the router does not mean that each of the four devices we can connect to it will end up with a 250 megabit connection obviously the combined bandwidth available to all connected devices is limited to one gigabit but when the devices are not in competition the full one gigabit is available to any device and all devices on the switch can enjoy a one gigabit connection to each other to test things out I've connected two computers to the switch in my garage and I've set up a shared folder so we can copy a large file across the network from one to the other as we can see the speed obtained is about 112 megabytes per second which is 0.896 gigabits and a typical real-world transfer rate over one gigabit Ethernet next I'll rearrange things so that one computer is connected directly to my router and the other remains connected to the switch and if we now copy across another large file we find that we obtain an identical speed hence we can be certain that there's no bottleneck when devices are not in competition and even if for example two computers were accessing the same NAS drive simultaneously the available bandwidths to be shared would be limited by the one gigabit connection to the NAS drive itself foreign today most home Computing devices have Wi-Fi however for the most reliable and secure network connection wired ethernet Remains the best solution and as we've seen in this video it's pretty straightforward to add more ethernet ports by installing a network switch but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed but you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed Please Subscribe and I hope to talk to you again very soon [Music]

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 127,636

Keywords: how to add Ethernet ports, adding Ethernet sockets, add network sockets, expand home network, unmanaged switch, network switch, what is a network switch, types of network switch, network switch bottleneck, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt, TP-Link

Id: 9m0kZOr7Ezw

Length: 12min 17sec (737 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 15 2023