Network Switch question

I have 3 PCs downstairs quite close to each other, which all use wireless for internet off a router upstairs. File transfers between them are of course slow. If I bought a network switch similar to the one below, could I plug all 3 into it, and have file transfers over ethernet cable via the switch, at the same time as internet access over wireless ? If yes, how would the PCs "know" to do the file transfers via the switch rather than wireless ?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-030-EX&groupid=46&catid=1626&subcat=
(not a gigabyte switch, not sure if that matters)

Yes you would. The PCs would be given a DHCP IP to their wireless cards and an APIPA which will be in 169.244.xxx.xxx range. You could set these manually if you like but make sure they are different from the ones your router gives out.

Basically OS have a thing called routing tables that will determine that traffic for 169.254 addresses will get routed over your wired connection and other traffic not destined to those IP addresses will get sent over the wireless

Thank you, I'll give this a go

Should work in a fairly plug and play manner that should need configuring really.

J.B said:

Should work in a fairly plug and play manner that should need configuring really.

Click to expand...

That's what I'm hoping !

I think it will have occasional issues if leaving things on auto. Over time the DNS cache will forget the addresses of the other PCs, which won't resolve if the Wifi is set as the primary connection. Also, there's no guarantee that the APIPA addresses will stay the same.

I recommend setting static IPs on the wired NICs (different subnet to wifi) and adding hosts entries into the hosts file for each. That way PC1 will always know how to contact PC2 and know that it should be reached via wired.

OK, if I need to do this, I'm pretty sure I know how to set the IP address and submask under the adaptor properties, but what exactly do I enter in the hosts file on each ? Just the IP addresses of the other two machines ?

IP address and PC name. I'd put all three address in each file so they're all the same.

An alternative and possibly better approach would be to turn off wireless in the PCs and add a wireless access point to the switch. The PCs would still pick up their IP addresses from the router and would only have one communications route. It's balancing the added cost of an AP against the hassle of faffing around with manual IP setting and hosts files.

Another thought is that some routers can be switched to become a wireless AP and switch so would do the job in one unit. Just don't ask me which ones can do this.....

The simplest solution if there are no wired devices upstairs would be to move the wrouter downstairs. If keeping it as is then adding wifi to a downstairs switch is a decent idea. Most wrouters can be used as a basic WAP and switch, by simply disabling their internal DHCP server. However, in this case the extra wifi would not be functioning as a regular WAP but would need to support the rarer "point to point bridge mode" (aka WDS), which also needs compatibility in the main wrouter see Netgear Scenario 2. Setup and compatibility can be troublesome, more so when using different brands, so I'd only suggest this for people fairly experienced in networking/wifi. However, on the plus side, if you regularly need to push lots of wifi traffic between upstairs and downstairs then a bridge is more efficient on bandwidth than using individual wifi adapters in each PC.

The switch arrived, I plugged the machines in, and just as you guys said it would, it all worked ! Marvellous, if only everything was so simple. I will manually set the IP addresses and edit the hosts file when I get a moment, but for right now plug and play is working OK. Thanks for your help guys !