Switch question

[mrk]

Am I right in thinking that a switch would take off the load of a router or would the load bearing still be the same?

Just looking at ways to further improve network throughput/performance with multiple clients connected

Ta!

 

[mrk]

Ah yes that's what I was hinting at, as in, right now my router has 5x gigabit ports (1 which is the WAN) but I have no evidence that shows that when transferring data via LAN that my internet connection to each client isn't affected either (eg: sometimes in the past when someone is pulling a video from my lan share and I am gaming I can experienced higher latency) - would this be what it is perhaps?

I assume from your description though that by installing a switch to a LAN port on the router that all lan machines can communicate as fast as possible with no affect on how fast they access the 20MB cable line?

If so then awesome!

My lan has a mix of wireless N and G as well as Ethernet + Gigabit clients so a real bag of treats

 

[mrk]

Ah I see, thanks.

So in theory I have 2 options.

Since I have more wireless clients than wired (3 wired) I could get either:

a: A wireless-n access point plugged into the router's free LAN port
b: A Gigabit switch

Both would give similar benefit by the sounds of it but since I dont' intend to add any more wired machines to the lan any time soon but instead add more N connected devices a dedicated N access point may well be the ideal option.

Now to research into N access points that are decent