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Is there a reason to use a dedicated switch with a home router? (lemmings.world)

submitted 1 year ago by moody@lemmings.world to c/networking@sh.itjust.works

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My work gave me a L2 switch because they were going to toss it out. Is there any reason for me to use that over the built-in switch from my ISP's router/modem?

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[–] bucho@lemmy.one 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The two main benefits I see are:

A dedicated L2 switch is probably going to be faster when transferring between two connected clients
You could set up VLANs, if you have a desire to. Not sure if your wifi router has that option.

[–] ANIMATEK@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

And the most obvious one: you can connect more devices! The reason why I have one tbh.

[–] dan@upvote.au 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

probably going to be faster when transferring between two connected clients

Pretty much all switches are wire-speed these days, even the cheap ones.

[–] marek22k@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

By "wire-speed" do you mean they're just as fast as if you didn't have a switch in between?

[–] dan@upvote.au 2 points 1 year ago

Yes :)

A gigabit switch is going to give you the full 1Gbps between any two ports on the switch. Same with 2.5Gbps and 10Gbps switches. You should see very little variance between different switches.

Usually the only time you'll find slower speeds is if it's a router rather than a switch, and the ports are all routed. This is uncommon, and for example a 5-port router is usually really a 4-port switch plus a router in a single device.