[PLUG] ethernet switches and glitches

Aaron Burt aaron at bavariati.org
Mon Dec 19 18:04:43 UTC 2005


On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 09:18:38AM -0800, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
[network periodically goes bye-bye]
> This may be due to a bad switch (either failing or poorly designed),
> or it may be that I have exceeded some specification for number of
> switches in series (perhaps they get confused when stacked this deep).
> Or it might be something else.  Ideas?

With TP ethernet hubs, there were timing issues when you went over X
number of hubs deep.  AFAIK switches function as re-timing modules and
take care of this, but each switch has to keep a list of all the MAC
addresses on each port.  Smaller, consumer-class switches probably
have a hard time doing this.  Also, they often don't support spanning-
tree protocol, which is a frame routing protocol for switched networks.

So a mesh of li'l 4-port switches probably are gonna keep losing track
of where everything is, and might not handle that situation right.

Or maybe you just have a bad switch in there somewhere.

FreeGeek has some nice 12- and 24-port switches in the store.  I don't
know if they're fast enough, but flattening out your network might be
a nice thing for the computer users in your household.




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