PCWorld: recommended switch

corblimey

I'm getting a 4+-port switch for my bband, and was wondering if anyone could recommend a good cheap option that I can get in PCWorld. I tried my local PC shop and unless I pronounced "ethernet" wrong, they have not a clue. So on my way home tomorrow I'll be stopping into PCWorld in Waterford. Cheap is imperative (sub e100?) but quality is utmost.

I know I can buy online (at komplett, for example), but I'd like to get my home office sorted out sooner rather than later.

Also, what exactly is the diff between straight through and twisted pair cables?

kenmc

corblimey wrote:

Also, what exactly is the diff between straight through and twisted pair cables?

Straight through cables are as the name sugests, connected pin to pin. ie pin 1 goes to pin 1, pin 2 to pin 2 etc at each end of the cable
Crossover (I presume you mean that as it's the opposite of straight through) has some pins connected to other pins on the other end. i.e pin 1 on end A goes to pin 2 on end B, pin 2 on end A goes to pin 1 on end B.
Straight throughs are used if you are connecting 2 pcs to a hub for example. If you wanna connect 2 pcs w/out a hub you'd use crossovers. Conversely, if you have a hub you can't use crossovers.

bminish

corblimey wrote:

I'm getting a 4+-port switch for my bband, and was wondering if anyone could recommend a good cheap option that I can get in PCWorld. Cheap is imperative (sub e100?) but quality is utmost.

A 1/2 decent switch can be had pretty cheaply these days but is that all you require ?
Many of the switches that folk use for sharing broadband also have built in firewalls and NAT (network address translation) However most ADSL routers also do NAT / Firewall so if this is the case you only need a simple 4port hub or switch. This should not be much over 30 euro these days and everything except ancient stock should do 100mbs.

Also, what exactly is the diff between straight through and twisted pair cables?

straight though cables are used for wiring computers to switches/Hubs.
Cross over cables are needed to wire computers back to back. Your ADSL modem usually connects to your PC using a cross over cable.
Many modern hubs and switches have Ethernet ports that auto sense thus doing away with the need for cross over cables, check when you buy but it's not a feature worth paying much extra for.

If you are doing your own cabling make sure that you do it to the appropriate standards or it may not work. Use Cat 5 (or cat5e) cable and keep each segment length to less than 100m.
Generally 586b is the connector wiring standard you want to use in Europe, 568a is more common in the US. It doesn't really matter which standard you use as long as you stick to it. (one of the things I love about standards is that there are so many of them.. )

For a straight though cable to 568b on both ends
If you want a cross over cable do 568b on one end & wire the other end 568a


Here is quite a good link explainig how to make cat5 cables but watch out since it shows 568a wiring first

Here is another good page

.Brendan

fatherdougalmag

And also consider a hub (as opposed to a switch). They could be cheaper again. Unless you're using the term switch to include hub devices as well.

Bass.exe

Switches are no more expensive than Hubs anymore... well, not to any great degreee. Komplett (yes, I know you don't want to go there, it's just an example) have 10/100 switches for sub-20 quid. Don't pay much more than that. An 8 port switch is only €17 and a 5 port is only €14. Obviously these ones are just switches, no firewall or NAT here - but most routers have that anyway.

Just out of curiosity, how DID you pronounce "ethernet"? Was it ee-thur-net or eth-er-net, or something else entirely?

corblimey

I may have pronounced it as "fuzzy wuzzy was a woman", but he should still have known what I was talking about

My receiver for my broadband (it's satellite) has NAT functionality built in, and I'm happy with my firewalls on both my PCs (I've used both online extensively over the last couple years with no break-ins) so I think my cheapest solution is a simple featureless switch.

I'm not sure of the diff between a 'switch' and a 'hub', but I kinda assumed they were the same.

The machines are right beside each other, so distance is not an issue. 2 short straight-through cat5 cables should do the trick?

Man, this is confusing, maybe I should have bought a bigger bag of broadbands, then I could share them out amongst my copmupers, right? :eek:

Bass.exe

Hubs and Switches are similar, but switches are faster, because they prevent "data collision" Don't worry about it, just know Switches > Hubs

I think you are being given too much information.
You just want a cheapy switch, and some plain old ethernet cables. Nothing more. Don't get Crossover cables. Nearly any shop should know the difference between the two.

You can share ANY internet connection among computers - as long as either a) you have a router or b)you enable internet connection sharing.

I'm assuming you have a router - what broadband service do you use?

Nevyn

switches are better. when you try to copy files from one pc to another that connected across a hub, the hub will broadcast the files across all the ports on the hub. a switch will only only send the signal between the two pcs that have requested it. Switches there for tend to be a little bit faster. and less network package collisions.

http://www.duxcw.com/faq/network/hubsw.htm
http://handsonhowto.com/lan102.html

so if your only gonna network the two pcs a hub will do but if you have gamers arround to lan a switch is a lot better.

corblimey

bass.exe. I don't have a router. AFAIK, anyway, there's a very small receiver plugged into the ethernet port of my machine. This 'receiver' is powered up and also connected to the cable coming off my satellite dish. Perhaps that's a router, but I very much doubt it? All I know is that it has 'limited NAT functionality' according to the documentation I received from my bb supplier.

I think I'll try getting my hands on a cheap switch and 2 straight thru cat5 cables, see what sort of damage I can inflict on my PCs.

Nevyn

thats not a router sounds more like the power for your signal to and from the dish sound simular tothe Ibb set up for the ateana on the roof.

you can to internet sharing with just a switch but your pc that has the net sat connection must have two network cards. one for the cat5 in fromt the dish one to the swtich and your network for the pcs. We at least that is how we did it till we got a router.

broadband

try www.expansys.ie for a large range on networking equipment

corblimey

See, originally that's what I thought, but all the book-readin' I been doing over the last few days about it leads me to think I could avoid 2 net cards in my PC.

As far as I can see, I can connect the 'receiver' directly to the hub/switch with the supplied ethernet link (the one that is currently connected to my machine). Then I can connect both PCs to the hub/switch through two of the other ports.

Right?

tuxy

Bass.exe wrote:

Nearly any shop should know the difference between the two.

do you think most the staff of pc world would?

Nevyn

No if you dont want two networks cards then you need the router to plug
the net connection into and then the pcs into the router.

Pffft pc world the last two guy i spoke to in there didnt know what RAM was or why it would have differnt speeds.

corblimey

Oh, I can beat that. Looking at a PC, I asked the salesman to open it up so that I could look at the expansion options, and he told me "Uh, I can't do that, it would invalidate the warranty." Whaaa'? I made my excuses and left.

Anyway, I'm back to confused.

If I buy a switch and 2 lengths of cable, I also need a second network card for one of my PCs? I don't understand why. I thought I'd just plug the current bb connection into 1 port of the switch, plug my 2 PCs into the other ports and Bob's my mother's brother. That won't do? What is the second network card connected to?

I've read the various posts here and elsewhere, and they all seem to lean towards that sort of solution. All I want is to be able to connect to the web on both PCs, at the same time.

Giblet

corblimey wrote:

Also, what exactly is the diff between straight through and twisted pair cables?

You mean Crossover and Straight Through.
Twisted pair is a method of shielding.

Blaster99

You need a router. This is either a dedicated hardware router or a PC acting as a router. The latter requires two ethernet cards. Considering a hardware router costs about €35 upwards and takes about two minutes to install I would think that's the smart option. For that you get a 4-port switch, a firewall, and NAT. You need NAT in order to add multiple machines to your one internet connection. NAT allows you to run an internal network and it maps the internal IP addresses to the external IP address seemlessly. You don't really need to worry about any of this as the router will be setup to do this automatically straight out of the box. The only thing you'll need to do is to setup the router to talk to your ISP, whether this is with a static IP address or DHCP.