How many Ethernet switches?

nmy537

I'm planning to run ethernet cable throughout house during renovation.
Can I run everything through one switch? Or should I have a couple of switches to separate the most used devices?
The most used devices will be streaming Netflix etc.

John Simon

If it’s not a huge no of devices one switch will be fine, if you were really concerned you could fork out more for a layer 3 switch and then you could separate groups of devices into vlans (virtual lans) but that gets quite technical

Kristian

You'll be fine, stick everything on one switch if they're all in the same location and/or the cabling goes back to the same place.  You can buy 48 ports switches so no worries with lots of devices on one unit.  If your devices are spread about the place then multiple switches could be a solution.

Small piece of advice for your cable runs.  If it's in any way a long, difficult or time consuming then I'd suggest pulling two cabling in at the same time so you have a spare in the future.

Lots of info in this forum on what to use and how to do it.

ChuckMountain

As per others.

The thing to watch though is 24 and 48 port switches can often have fans which can be particularly loud in a domestic environment, even if they are in another room.

You might also want to consider if you are using any PoE devices such as camera or WiFi access points.  You could separate these into two different switches to keep the cost (and noise) down.