Single 16 port vs Two 8 port Switches.

Can anyone answer me this?

Is there a difference between having:
two 8 port ethernet switches connected together
OR
one 16 port switch

Ideally I would like to have several switches located in different
areas (in same room) so I don't have cables going everywhere... but not
at the expense of performance.

Is there any difference in performance between 2 switches and one?

Thanks.

On 2005-04-29, Lostwave <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Is there a difference between having:
> two 8 port ethernet switches connected together
> OR
> one 16 port switch

Well, if you have 2x8 ports switch, you in fact have only 14 ports
available, since 2 of them are used by the interconnecting cable
(and maybe another one is taken by the connection with the server),
while a single 16 ports has 16 ports available (minus the one for the
connection with the server eventually).

Also, usually 8 ports have smaller power adapters, so you need 2 outlets,
while bigger 16 ports have their own PSU built-in so they take only
one outlets but they are noisy.

Performance-wise, I don't think there is a big differences, if you don't
want managed switches of course, in this case I think you really need a
16 port one (I've never see an 8 port switch with enough intelligence to
be a managed one).

> areas (in same room) so I don't have cables going everywhere.

Have you considered wireless then ?

Davide

--
Windows 2000 will be released as soon as Windows 98 finishes loading.

"Lostwave" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) oups.com...

> Is there a difference between having:
> two 8 port ethernet switches connected together
> OR
> one 16 port switch

> Is there any difference in performance between 2 switches and one?

There will be a huge difference if several machines on one switch try to
talk to several machines on the other switch at the same time. The link
between the two switches could easily saturate.

DS

Lostwave wrote:

> Is there any difference in performance between 2 switches and one?
>

Additional latency on data passing through both switches.

Lostwave <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Can anyone answer me this?
>
> Is there a difference between having:
> two 8 port ethernet switches connected together
> OR
> one 16 port switch
>
> Ideally I would like to have several switches located in different
> areas (in same room) so I don't have cables going everywhere... but not
> at the expense of performance.
>
> Is there any difference in performance between 2 switches and one?

Yes, if you're pushing lots of bandwidth around.

Take, for example, an 8 port switch, with 8 computers on it. 4 of the
computers are trying to send a full 100Mbit stream to the other 4 computers.
This means that the switch has to be capable of handling 400Mbits of total
bandwidth, or else the machines will see a slowdown.

If you've got two switches linked together, that means that the "backplane"
between the two is that single 100Mbit cable. So in the case of our 4 and 4
again, if the 4 senders are on one switch and the 4 recievers are on the other,
they will only have a grand total of 100Mbit to share among each other, meaning
none will get any more than 25Mbit individually.

If, on the other hand, you're just doing a little light email and web browsing,
you'll probably never notice the difference.

--
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WPI Network Engineer | is simple, elegant, and wrong. - HL Mencken
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