Daisy chain switches

Sure the direct router connection setup has advantages, as the traffic from switch 4 doesnt need to be chained through all switches.

It will go then PC -SW4-Router-SW1-PC

before in your current setup it was PC-SW4-SW3-SW2-SW1-PC

Each switch only has limited internal thoughput, if also much traffic in one of the chained swiches occour that is between PCs directly connected to this witch it will also slow down bandwith of the go though connections of the daisy chain.

In most cases daisy chain topology is worse than a star topology.

What are these 6 switches and 1 router supporting? a home network or a business?

Do you have a firewall in front of the router?

What make and model are the 6 switches?

At an overview without hearing your answers to the above Q, the switches should be trunked together through the trunk ports and one of them connected to the firewall or router.

What are these 6 switches and 1 router supporting?
Switches : HP 1410-24G un-managed
Router: Draytek Vigor 2830 plugged into a openreach modem with a BT infinity line

a home network or a business?
small business

Do you have a firewall in front of the router?
to my knowledge

Hi Peggiereg,

This is not good a Draytek router effectively being your firewall, its actually a non runner today i dont mean to be to harsh but im not giving incorrect answers to get points, companys even small businesses need a firewall attached to the isp device. If cash is tight settle for a sonicwall tz100 or equivalent model v cheap, they also do vpn at the firewall level.

Im very very high level in small business support what to do and what not to do, ive worked for cowboy companys and big msp companys.

these switches you have, it seems a bit excessive 6 X switches for a small business(maybe consider creating two interfaces and subnets on your sonicwall and using three switches on each interface subnet, one interface for voice(phones) and one for network and internet data), these switches can be connected in two ways to each other.

1) the two trunk ports on the far right hand side of the devices.
2) by using any one of the 24 switch ports these things have a normal RJ45 between two of them will link them.
3) please keep in mind one of these switches has to be connected to the firewall lan interface.
4) do not send email out onto the internet or through your isp smart host, contact somebody like mimecast or fusemail to send and receive mail from.

these guidelines should definetly keep your business in check!

alot of people on here will give you some stupid answer just to get points, for example tell you to hook this gear up, this stuff is fir to serve a PS4 and a gamer and thats about it, a Draytek Vigor that is.

Hi Guys,

the problem is, I have started working for this company and I am there only IT engineer. I applied for 1st line but the role has somewhat changed.

I know enough to do with switches, routers etc to get by but not enough to re-invent the wheel.

the existing setup was setup by a support company previously.

the setup here runs fine as far as I can tell. we don't have 6 switches, we have 4 but the router has 6 outputs.

they are not going to spend to redo the whole lot.

the only reason we have the draytek in place is because our BT broadband business hub died and luckily we had one here, so I configured it up and got it running.

I was going to purchase a vigor-2860