Connecting a switch to a router can allow you to add more connections to your home network. A switch can expand the number of wired ethernet ports on your router, which is useful for gaming consoles, smart home hubs, and other devices that don’t have Wi-Fi built-in.
When it comes to connecting a router and a switch, many people have questions about how they work together. They want to know whether they should use a switch or a router for their home networking needs, and how to configure them properly.
The difference between a router and a switch is that a router routes data across networks, while a switch sends data packets between one locally-networked device and another locally-networked device using hardware addresses and packet switching.
A switch receives data packets from one device on a locally-networked network, switches them to the correct network port with the help of a MAC address lookup table and sends them along to another device on the same network, or to a different network if that’s necessary.
Depending on the type of switch, each port can handle a different amount of data at once. For example, a 10/100 switch can handle 100 Mbps total of data in each direction simultaneously on each port; a Gigabit (10/100/1000) switch can handle 1000 Mbps.
It’s also important to understand that the speed of a connection between a router and a switch can be impacted by the types of devices you are assigning to each port. This can cause bottlenecking in some situations, especially when you are transferring large files across the network, downloading multiple video streams, or Torrenting.
You can use a single connection between your router and switch to support more than four devices on your network, but it’s important to remember that each device should have its own IP address. This will ensure that the devices can access each other without interfering with your network’s connectivity.
The main reason that you would want to connect a switch to your router is because many devices don’t have Wi-Fi built-in and therefore require a wired connection to the router in order to get online. These include gaming consoles, smart home hubs, computers, and other devices that need a strong internet connection and low latency.
To connect your router to a switch, simply follow these steps:
Step 1: Plug the modem’s WAN port into the WAN port of your router and the other end of an Ethernet cable connected with the modem into the LAN port of the router.
step 2: Unplug the power supplies of all the devices you will be connecting, including your router and your modem.
Step 3: Using another Ethernet cable, connect one of the LAN ports in your router to a network switch port.
Alternatively, you can use a straight cable to connect one of the LAN ports on your router to a network switch port and the other end to a device.