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I have a small home network. 1 router with wifi and 4 lan ports. The problem is that I don't have enough lan ports and I want to extend it.

I have a few possible solutions but I feel like none of them are good enough.

Solution 1:

                      /-- [Switch (B)] -> [more lan devices (C)]
ISP ->[Router(A)] ----
                  |   \-- [3 lan devices (D)]
                  |
                  |------ [WiFi devices (E)]

Questions:

  • Will devices from (C) be able to reach segment (A) (D) and (E) and vice-versa ?
  • Will devices in segment (C) have access to internet ?
  • Will communication in segment (C) to (C) involve router or no ?

Concerns:

  • Broadcast messages from segment(C) behind switch(B) may not reach segment (D) or (E). SmartTV minidlna server will not be discoverable for clients in (D) and (E) segment. Don't know hot to fix this

Solution 2:

                                  |--- [WiFi devices (C)]
                                  |
                      /-- [Router(B)] -> [3 more lan devices (D)]
ISP ->[Router(A)] ----
                  |   \-- [3 lan devices (E)]
                  |
                  |------ [WiFi devices (F)]

Questions:

  • How viable this solution is in general?
  • Is it possible to unify 2 or more routers to work as a single LAN network ?

Concerns:

  • Each router have only 4 ports may be too expensive.

Solution 3:

                                  |--- [WiFi devices (C)]
                                  |
                      /-- [Router(B)] -> [3 more lan devices (D)]
ISP ->[Switch(A)] ----
                     \-- [many lan devices (E)]

Questions:

  • How viable this solution is in general?
  • Will Segment C/D reach E ?

Concerns:

  • One of the lan devices should be exposed to internet(specific ports only) Will I be able to port-forward from switch to router then to specific device ?

Any other options are welcome.

Main requirements are the flowing:

  • Be able to send/receive Broadcast messages to any device in home network.
  • Be able to expose some ports to internet as I am doing it now from router.
  • Good performance on LAN to LAN communication
dev devv
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1 Answers1

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TLDR;

Connect a new switch (and by switch I mean a switch, not a router) to one of the existing LAN ports on the router. All of the devices connected to either switch will be on the same network and will communicate with each other perfectly fine.

Connecting a new switch doesn't create a new network segment. Both switches are still just one network segment.

To address your other questions:

Because the computers will be connected to the same network segment, broadcast traffic will be seen by all computers. They will all be in the same broadcast domain.

The router doesn't see the switches at all. The traffic doesn't originate from the switches, it originates from the computers that are connected to the switches.

joeqwerty
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  • Will broadcast messages be visible anywhere in the Lan ? Will router see the switch as one device or it will be invisible ? – dev devv Aug 31 '20 at 17:06