[OT] Purchasing a wired switch; advice needed
Howdie, fellow Debianites!
Any networking guru lurking on the list?
Here's the situation. There's basically two (interrelated) families
sharing our broadband connection. In the other family, there's this
person who's downloading large numbers of files around the clock. As
we've just upgraded the broadband contract, the number of files is
bound to increase substantially. I have no power --or interest --
whatsoever over this person to change that. In addition, our family
also downloads a lot.
Now, it's been our past experience that all these open connections
quickly bring our router down, forcing us to manually reset it and just
basically making our internet life dysfunctional.
And here's what I need advice for:
I'm planning to purchase a wired (consumer grade) switch since I've
heard they're inherently more robust than (consumer grade) routers, and
I'm planning to connect it *directly* to our cable broadband modem.
Then, the two families would connect their respective routers (we have
some spare wireless routers) to this switch. The various computers and
network printers would then be connected, in turn, to these routers.
Can a switch juggle two basically separate segments, plus a broadband
connection, like that? What capabilities should I be looking for in
such a switch?
Would it reduce the load on the two routers and do away with their
lock-ups?
Would it make our two networks more independent, so that one locked-up
router wouldn't bring the whole network down? I guess we should
separate the shared LAN into two distinct IP subnets?
Particular hardware suggestions welcome (just don't make them
expensive!).
TIA
--
Cheerio,
Klistvud
http://bufferoverflow.tiddlyspot.com
Certifiable Loonix User #481801 Please reply to the list, not to
me.
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