Daisy-Chaining a 5 port and 8 port switche

I have a 5 port Netgear gigabit switch and need to add capacity so I'm considering getting an 8 port switch to replace it which will serve my needs, but in the event that I end up needing more ports, I can daisy-chain the 5 port switch with the 8 port switch, but I understand that performance will suffer as the cable linking both switches will create a bottleneck. But can I get around that by connecting each switch to separate ports of my router (a Bipac 7800n)? Or am I better off just getting a 16 port switch which will probably provide for my needs forever?

Oh, any recommendations for a switch? I've been looking at Netgear and TP-Link but I see the reviews on TP-Link switches aren't that glowing, and Cisco is just very expensive.

Edited by joconnell (Sun 13-Dec-15 22:17:41)

I prefer metal cased switches which improve heat dissipation. Plastic cases feel a bit cheap whatever the make.
I've been using 5 of the TRENDnet TEG-S82g 8-Port Gigabit Unmanaged Metal Desktop Switches from Amazon for around £26 and have found them to be reliable and very fast, reaching well over 100+ MB/s on occasions, which is not far off the theoretical unobtainable maximum of 125 MB/s. Of course speed does depend on many variables, but there certainly isn't any bottleneck on the switches that are daisy chained. They also do a 16 port version for £65. The 5/8 port have Ethernet and power ports at the back and LEDs at the front which I prefer. But the 16/24 port versions have Ethernet and LEDs at front, power at the back, which is more suited to rack mounting. Not very practical for home use. Hope this helps.

Edited by deleted (Mon 14-Dec-15 00:04:01)

Yes you could daisy chain and there might be a bottle neck - however if both are Gbit capable - is that an issue and how often would that happen?

Yes, connecting both to the router would also work - that moves the potential bottle neck into the router and you could have a lot of traffic going through there.

Personally, I would go down the third route - a 16 port (or even 24 port) switch.

I invested in a Managed Linksys 2024 several years back and it is still going strong!

Thanks. I've never thought of looking at TrendNET stuff, I'll check it out.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Yes you could daisy chain and there might be a bottle neck - however if both are Gbit capable - is that an issue and how often would that happen?

Yes, connecting both to the router would also work - that moves the potential bottle neck into the router and you could have a lot of traffic going through there.

Personally, I would go down the third route - a 16 port (or even 24 port) switch.

I invested in a Managed Linksys 2024 several years back and it is still going strong!

I did think about getting a 16 port switch, I could then just connect all 14 network points in the house to the switch rather than having to mess around with the patch cables everytime a device gets moved to another room/another network point.

However cost put me off but then I thought about trying eBay for a quality 16 port switch.

Have a look on ebay for an SRW2024 - there are a few used ones on there.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Have a look on ebay for an SRW2024 - there are a few used ones on there.

Thanks. Interesting recommendation though, apparently the web-based management console for those switches only works with Internet Explorer 6 or IE in compatibility mode.

I use FireFox with the IE Tab2 Add-on and can access my switch console.