How to use a network switch

Follow up question:

If I wanted to connect a second switch, should it connect directly to the router (purple wire) or should it connect to one of the green wires?

Both are fine, just make sure that you always pass everything though a modem first.

1)yes

2)I dont think there's any disadvantage if your router ports are providing more bandwith than you need across all devices.

>>1170095
>>1170105

thanks

>>1170090
Most switches have a basic setup guide. However, I'd suggest reading here
https://www.howtogeek.com/99001/htg-explains-routers-and-switches/
There are a lot of other sites out there. But going back to your question, yes, that's fine.
As for what you loose, noting really. The limiting factor is your cable modem. Most modern kit does 1G and most cable modems don't go over 100M, though some places are getting faster.

>>1170090
your router is essentially a shit computer with two network ports, one port is the wan, the second port connects to a switch that connects to all the other ports. so your router has a 5 port switch inside it really.

depends on the speed of the ports and the switch.

ports used to in the old days run at 10Mbps, then 100Mbps then 1000Mbps/1Gbps. bigger is faster and therefore better.

so
if your router ports are only 100M but your switch is gigabit switch (1000M) and say you have two computers you share files between and they support gigabit network then put them both on the yellow switch so they will run at full speed.

say you have a games console or some shit for playing online games with other people you might want to connect to the purple because its less devices handling your packet, a switch looks at every packet and decides where to send it, the more switches the more times it has to be looked at and the longer it takes to get there, this is 'latency' and gamers hate it.

also say e.g. you ran open source firmware and firewall on your router you might configure different ports for different networks, your purple cable could connect to a dmz hosting servers isolated from your internal network.