Connecting several items

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• chrisjr Posts: 33,282

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  13/02/14 - 18:15 #2

  56up wrote: »

  My hub is in the spare room where my desktop resides. I have run a cat 5 cable from the lounge to the spare room and can connect any one of the devices under my TV. Three have internet capability, the TiVo, my Panny HDD DVD recorder/player and the TV itself. The TV has WiFi but it is sooo slow I'd like to hard wire it.
  
  I tried using a spare Netgear hub / router to act as a switch and it seemed to work fine, both the TiVo and the Panny were accessible on the network and I could log in remotely to the TiVo from outside my home.
  
  All good so far. Then I discovered that my desktop could not connect to the internet nor could I stream SD content from the Panny to me desktop. After a lot of work with the VM team they looked at my setup and said the Netgear switch was at fault. Sure enough, I removed the switch and, hey presto, the desktop is back on the internet. The fault seemed to be intermittent and so I did not connect the 2 events.
  
  Using a switch to connect the devices should work, shouldn't it? I did wonder if the fact that there is a modem in the Netgear caused the problem even though it was not being used.
  
  Anyone any thoughts on this?

  Did you make sure that all DHCP server functions in the Netgear were turned off? If it was dishing out IP addresses as well as the main router then there is potential for clashes to occur. This could easily screw up the performance of your network.
  
  Perhaps a simple switch would be a better bet?
  
  http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-SF1005D-100Mbps-Unmanaged-Desktop/dp/B000FNFSPY/
  http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-SG1005D-Gigabit-Unmanaged-Desktop/dp/B000N99BBC

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• 56up Posts: 839

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  13/02/14 - 18:38 #3

  chrisjr wrote: »

  Did you make sure that all DHCP server functions in the Netgear were turned off?
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  No, I did not. Never even crossed my mind. I actually bought one of those and tried it. It did not work, then I discovered that a wire had come loose in the connection box at the other end. By then I had installed the Netgear, that was working until the problems started.
  
  Now I have another problem - I can't find the switch!!

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• chrisjr Posts: 33,282

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  13/02/14 - 18:45 #4

  56up wrote: »

  No, I did not. Never even crossed my mind. I actually bought one of those and tried it. It did not work, then I discovered that a wire had come loose in the connection box at the other end. By then I had installed the Netgear, that was working until the problems started.
  
  Now I have another problem - I can't find the switch!!

  If you can get into the config of the Netgear it's not that hard to find the DHCP server section and disable it. Once you do that it should operate as a simple network switch

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• 56up Posts: 839

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  13/02/14 - 19:05 #5

  Thanks for the heads up, I have done it with our modem at the office - had to assign fixed IP addresses to the computers in work. I don't do it that way now, made it too difficult if someone used a WiFi laptop or phone. I turned the DCHP back on and use a look-up table on the mac addresses for the fixed units.

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• bobcar Posts: 19,424

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  13/02/14 - 21:36 #6

  Switches are really cheap so if you want to avoid any problems then just buy a switch. I would put the value of the cost of a switch at much less than the hassle you've already had.

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• [Deleted User] Posts: 50

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  13/03/14 - 18:40 #7

  bobcar wrote: »

  Switches are really cheap so if you want to avoid any problems then just buy a switch. I would put the value of the cost of a switch at much less than the hassle you've already had.

  
  Indeed. They are a few quid....

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