My homenetwork is currently a big mess without any structure or organization.

 

Many devices have been added the last 5 years, filling ports on both router and switch and switch and switch and so on.....

 

It has a

 

1. Asus RT-AC87 router.

2. HP 1811-24 switch

3. 8 port Trendnet Gigabit switch

4. 8 port Netgear Gigabit switch.

 

And a big pile of Cat5E and Cat6 cables running criss-cross or should I say cable salad.

 

I like to re-organize all this but what best practice an what should be avoided.

 

Is it best to run a Cat6 cable from from one LAN port on the router to each switch or is it acceptable to daisy-chain 2 or 3 witches?

 

Should servers and several mediaplayers be on the same switch to get best possible bandwith when playing high bitrate movies? Possibly 2 or 3 movies at the same time.

 

Any advice, suggestions, hints and tips are welcome.

 

 

 

I like to re-organize all this but what best practice an what should be avoided.

 

Is it best to run a Cat6 cable from from one LAN port on the router to each switch or is it acceptable to daisy-chain 2 or 3 witches?

 

Should servers and several mediaplayers be on the same switch to get best possible bandwith when playing high bitrate movies? Possibly 2 or 3 movies at the same time.

 

Any advice, suggestions, hints and tips are welcome.

 

 

Daisy-chaining is less then ideal. You really should avoid doing this.

 

I think it would ideally be best for them to be on the same switch. That said I don't know that 2-3 movies at the same time would be a problem unless you've got other things happening as well. This of course depends on exactly how high bitrate you mean. 

 

As already previously stated, avoid daisy chaining switches if possible, clean up your cabling and label it, it will make your life much easier. Cat6 is not necessary, cat5e is fine for gigabit. As long as your switches are decent quality and not the $20 no name variety, whether all devices are on the same switch or not shouldn't make too big a difference, you certainly shouldn't experience any slowdowns due to buffering by a streaming device not being on the same switch. The length of cable runs can be a determining factor, but as long as you don't have any runs that are over 100ft or more you should be ok ( I think you can go up to 150ft before it becomes an issue).

 

I like to re-organize all this but what best practice an what should be avoided.

 

Is it best to run a Cat6 cable from from one LAN port on the router to each switch or is it acceptable to daisy-chain 2 or 3 witches?

 

Should servers and several mediaplayers be on the same switch to get best possible bandwith when playing high bitrate movies? Possibly 2 or 3 movies at the same time.

 

Any advice, suggestions, hints and tips are welcome.

 

 

Daisy-chaining is less then ideal. You really should avoid doing this.

 

Is running a cable from router to a 24 or 16 port switch and then from that switch to other switches and devices acceptable?

I think it would ideally be best for them to be on the same switch. That said I don't know that 2-3 movies at the same time would be a problem unless you've got other things happening as well. This of course depends on exactly how high bitrate you mean.

Mostly Bluray backups playing Dune mediaplayer and Pioneer networked Bluray player.

 

I like to re-organize all this but what best practice an what should be avoided.

 

Is it best to run a Cat6 cable from from one LAN port on the router to each switch or is it acceptable to daisy-chain 2 or 3 witches?

 

Should servers and several mediaplayers be on the same switch to get best possible bandwith when playing high bitrate movies? Possibly 2 or 3 movies at the same time.

 

Any advice, suggestions, hints and tips are welcome.

 

 

Daisy-chaining is less then ideal. You really should avoid doing this.

 

Is running a cable from router to a 24 or 16 port switch and then from that switch to other switches and devices acceptable?

I think it would ideally be best for them to be on the same switch. That said I don't know that 2-3 movies at the same time would be a problem unless you've got other things happening as well. This of course depends on exactly how high bitrate you mean.

Mostly Bluray backups playing Dune mediaplayer and Pioneer networked Bluray player.

 

WAN->Router->Switch->Devices = OK.

WAN->Router->Switch1->Switch2->Devices = Not what you should do.

 

The reason is that you've got the problem of exponential decay of throughput for each additional switch chained like this.

 

All of the Traffic on every port of Switch2 is being pushed though ONE port on Switch1. That one port is already sharing traffic to the router with all the other ports traffic.

 

You should have no problem even if they aren't on the same switch, I was worried you were talking about 4K (which I don't think would be a problem, but I don't have much experience with.)