Can I add a gigabit switch to my D-Link WiFi router for gigabit networking?

Question

I currently have a D-Link DIR-628 router in my home network that I use for wifi and local networking. However, I am looking to upgrade to a gigabit network as the data transfer speed between my network devices is too slow since the router only supports 10/100.

Can I simply add a small gigabit switch (like the Netgear GS105) to the router and connect all local network devices to the gigabit switch ports instead of the router's ports or do I need to replace the entire router to a gigabit router?

Answer 1

The short answer is yes: http://www.dlink.com/DIR-628/ has a "works with" option - follow that and you will see they sell 10/100/1000 switches this will work with.

The concern however would be - is this also acting as the router for the entire network? If so - than you may still run into some issues - depending upon how much traffic your actually putting into the system (even if internal).

Generally for really heavy traffic - I would suggest a gigabit network - a decent router (x86 based will work, hardware would as well) and then place the wireless to hang off the network as a device in Bridge mode instead - the problem however with the DIR-628 as pointed out by another ServerFault posting is that it simply does not support Bridge Mode (unless you reload DD-WRT or Tomato onto the system) I verified this is still the case peeking @ the specs (page 94 of the product manual )

You might want to download the latest firmware via this link: ftp://ftp.dlink.com/Gateway/dir628/Firmware/dir628_fw_124NA.zip (just make sure to use a wired link vs wireless to install) to help solve any inconsistency issues you may have with the unit - as Firmware 1.23NA 2/11/2010 did each of the following (note there is an even later release than this)

¤ Fixed: Correct HNAP issue.

¤ Fixed: DNS relay issue (WAN Slowdown).

¤ Added: Advanced DNS descriptions.

The chipset on that unit however is not the fastest --- so it may be your limiting factor even if you do place a GigE switch in place... a smart switch should help you get around most of those limits however.

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Answer 2

How did you judge that your LAN is too slow? Are you doing operations that consume a lot of bandwidth such as transferring very large files?

If you want to increase the speed of your LAN, you can use a Gigabit switch as you said. However, you will not gain any increase in the speed when communicating with other networks using the same router. The link between the router and the switch will be 100 Mbps not 1Gbps.