Can I do this?

Le_Petit_Lapin · 27 Oct 2008 at 16:41

Right I have a network here, 8 machines hooked up to an 8 port Switch/Router/VPN/ Firewall box thing (Netgear Prosafe FVS318).

7 of those machines are in the one downstairs room, however the last machine, a rather noisy bugger of a server is at the top of the building in a separate room on its own, and it was a right old pain in the arse drilling holes for the wire up to it.

Now, the powers that be have decided to shove another server up there to keep it company. Now I could have course just buy a 16 port hub/switch/thing to replace the old 8 Port, but I'd really rather not do that as I'd be drilling holes in walls all day again.

Is it possible then for me to get a 2 port switch thing or something to place on the end of the network lead that is at the top of the building and connect the two servers to that? If I do that will both the servers be visible to all the other machines on the network and will the servers be able to see all the printers on the network?

Unfortunately, wireless isn't an option, tried it before and it just doesn't like the journey to the top of the building, it keeps dropping the connection, especially on a day of bad weather? :confused:

Anyway, it caused endless hastle in the past, and I simply can't be arsed with it. The wired has not had a single problem since the day it was switched on, I'll stick to wired thanks

So....is this doable? Many thanks for help!

Dist · 27 Oct 2008 at 16:51

Placing a switch next to the server will work fine. Its unlikely you will find a 2 port switch but 5 port switch are quite cheap these days.

Le_Petit_Lapin · 27 Oct 2008 at 16:58

Dist said:
Placing a switch next to the server will work fine. Its unlikely you will find a 2 port switch but 5 port switch are quite cheap these days.

And the network will be visable through the switch in both directions? Is there any settings I need to do for this to work or is it just plug and go? never had to use more than one router before.

Dist · 27 Oct 2008 at 17:00

Multiple switches on the same network will not be a problem, they are invisible to the network and so just pass on packets of data as needed to the correct locations. Its only when you try to use multiple routers on a network that you may run into problems, but multiple switches is not an issue.

WILD9 · 27 Oct 2008 at 17:10

Hes right the switching is entirely transparent, they are made to be daisy chained like that. The only down side is that both computers share the bandwith of the cable between the two switches. This is unlikely to be much of an issue depending on the role of the computers. When you say server, what exactly are they serving?

dave-lew99 · 27 Oct 2008 at 17:17

The cable between the two switches will have to be of crossover type unless one of them has an uplink port/mode or the ports are auto MDI-X (which i believe those netgears are).

Otherwise it will be fine, you may wish to get two switches with gigabit uplink/fully gigabit as your two servers together will only have 100meg to your other switch (essentially halving the bandwidth per server - under full load)

tolien · 27 Oct 2008 at 17:55

Pretty much any modern switch will do MDI-X these days.

Le_Petit_Lapin · 27 Oct 2008 at 19:11

Sweet, just go and find myself a switch then, save myself the hastle of the drill.

Bandwidth isn't an issue, they're just fileservers, for at most 4 users at a time, and once they open a file, they're liable to work on it for at least an hour, then save it back onto the server. Thats all.

Thanks for the help!