Home Network and Multiple Switches

Hi, I am upgrading my home network as I have run out of ports on my Cisco SG100-24 unmanaged switch.  I have purchased another SG100-24 which will give me the ports required now and going forward.  My question is how best to connect them.  I am currently using a Cisco RV320 router to the first SG100-24.  I see two obvious choices - daisy chain them or connect each switch to the router as more of a tree approach.  I also have an 8 port (SG200-08) but I am not sure I need it any longer.
 
I would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.  Thx much.

I would connect each SG100 directly to the RV320, rather than daisy chaining them, as it gives you a more balanced network structure.  If you daisy chain the switches, then all your internet traffic has to pass over the single link connecting the one SG100 to the router.  Daisy chaining the switches also adds more latency to traffic for devices connected to the second switch.  Whether you will really notice any difference or not depends on your overall network traffic pattern and the bandwidth you have from your ISP.

Thx RAL - that was my thought as well.  The SG100-24 seems to have this mini GBIC Combo port which the manual states is designed for connecting multiple switches together but the modules seem to be quite expensive so I am not really sure that is worth the cost.  I think I just got side tracked by the combo ports rather tan keeping it simple.
 
So my plan will be RV320 Port 1 to SG100-24#1, Port 2 to SG100-24#2, Port 3 to my Server and Port 4 to my WAP.  Sound Good?  I see no use for the 8 port switch regardless of it being a "smart switch" as it seems to have lower switching and forwarding capacity then the 24 port switches by far.

Your plan sounds good.  The GBIC port on the SG100 just gives you the capability to connect to other switches using optical fiber, allowing greater distance between the switches.  I don't think there is any performance advantage to using them.

Depends on the amount of cross-switch traffic that exists.  You want to coordinate things so 'bulk traffic' stays on the same switch.  Otherwise you're running a freight train of data back/forth across the router.  Most routers don't have a lot of bandwidth, so having media servers on one switch and the clients consuming the data on the other would probably be less than ideal.  Concentrate the heavy consumers on one switch and move the others to a new one.  
 
So I'd lean more toward daisy-chaining one switch into another and then to the router.  Then the question becomes whether to put the heavy consumers in the middle or the end.  If their consumption is all 'on site' then put them on the end.  If they're using a lot of internet bandwidth then having them in the middle, again, best avoids the freight train running across.  
 
It's been a while since I've dealt with Cisco units, but some are capable of being much more intelligent about managing traffic.   Most commonly the single-connection 'router on a stick' configuration.  That or combining links for increasing bandwidth.  So depending on your units and their IOS options you may have some more effective ways to manage things.

Here doing both today.
 
I have multiple managed 24 port Gb switches daisychained together and switches connected to LAN ports on the PFSense firewall.
 
I am testing some cloud connected automation hubs and multiple ISP connections.
 
The PFSense firewall is using an Intel Core Duo with 4 Gb of memory with 6 Intel Gb NICs on it and is currently a workhorse. 
 

 
I have to look as I have a drawing showing this somewhere around.
 
Looking at the specs on the Cisco Router RV320 and it appears to be a SOHO device for a small office set up.
 
 

Hi Pete - yes the RV320 is indeed designed for SOHO set-ups which is applicable here.  Bill raises some interesting points here as well.  The network traffic is pretty evenly split between day office centric (IP telephones, video conferencing and internet use both internal and VPN'd to the main office) with a heavy NETFLIX and iTunes crowd in the evening.  I am actually leaning now to segregating the activities in that fashion between the switches - I just need to land on the connection path.  I am actually leaning towards daisy chaining the two switches with the business side in the middle per Bill's plan though I am not sure there would be that much difference.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions.

I would personally test it out both ways.  Guessing you will break the router before the switches.
 
Use a packet generator.  Years ago used to enjoy trying to break Cisco switches and routers.
 
You can watch the traffic on the managed switches mirroring one port and also watch the traffic on multiple LAN ports via the firewall. 
 
Most important are the IP Telephones (well if on a POE switch, video conferencing and VPN to the main office).    The meat is the IP telephones and the VPN connection to the main office.
 

The network traffic is pretty evenly split between day office centric (IP telephones, video conferencing and internet use both internal and VPN'd to the main office)

Click to expand...

 
Sounds more day small office than night home network,  How many IP Telephones are you using?

As far as I can recall, 6 hops is the limit for bridging end-to-end. I'm not sure how VLANs could affect this number (I doubt it changes though).
 
A -[ 1 ]=[ 2 ]=[ 3 ]=[ 4 ]=[ 5 ]- Z
 
Pete, I too abused Cisco switches and routers as part of my job (IXIA and SmartBit). We used the Cisco switches (Cisco 2ks through 6Ks) as part of our infrastructure and they worked really well, lots of VLANs.

Hi Pete - thanks again for the input.  Up to 3 IP phones, though generally just one or two at any one time.  But almost always one IP phone along with a video conference system (a Magor HiDef video Conf System if you are familiar) along with the VPN connection.  I agree these are the most important connections.  I will do some testing tomorrow.  Thanks again.

@linuxha
 
Yup; here it was an airline and we migrated to all CIsco in the 2000's.
 
I had much fun as Cisco (and other vendors) always provided me with little appetizers to try.  
 
Funny cuz when we first started to play with F5's; didn't initially believe the specs; so we tried to break them.  We were not able to.
 
 
@jason
 
3 IP phones isn't  much such that you shouldn't have an issue. 

Bill summarized the issues well... I'll just say it's highly unlikely you're using anywhere near a gigabit of traffic anywhere on your network - netflix and the like can't consume more than your internet bandwidth supports (probably 25mbps or less?) - so that's a small chunk; in fact that is true of all services that connect outside the home.  You're more likely to benefit from traffic prioritization on the WAN side and maybe even on the switches to make sure the most important connections get in/out first, like voice and video.
 
When connecting more than one switch together, if you legitimately think you'll use more than 1gbps worth of data or just want to add an extra layer, you can generally connect 2 cables between the two switches and enable Link Aggregation if it isn't done automatically - this will get you double the bandwidth.
 
Again though - the only way you're getting close to what gigabit does is if you're generating tons of traffic inside the home regularly - like super large file transfers and simultaneous multiple streams to an HTPC in the house while running 25 cameras.
 
In this house I was limited - not enough wires in the right places - so I have cascaded switches around the house in a couple places with the single gigabit back to the main switch - and they're all VLAN capable so I can separate the office VPN from the house traffic.  It's not perfect but +99% of people would never even notice the difference between 100mbps and 1gbps - especially since the majority of your traffic is really limited to your WAN connection speed.

I didn't see the details of what was on the switches.  I was thinking more about home network setups with a lot of media traffic.  Bulk transfers from a media server, Tivo (or other DVR) and filesharing can really put a burden on switches.  True, individually they're unlikely to be enough to saturate a gigE link.  
 
But factoring how switch buffers handle heavy loads is often neglected.  Some lower end switches do a really poor job of handling diverse traffic, especially under load.  Latency for lighter load services starts taking a hit.  It's indeed much like being stuck at a train crossing sometimes.  
 
Cisco gear is 'less likely' to have this problem.  But the amount of programming that can be done with them doesn't come 'for free'.  Not from a purchase perspective (features sometimes cost more to add) but also from a CPU load.  The more you ask the routers/switches to "do with" the packets (vpns, filters, subnets, etc) the less CPU it'll have to carry the traffic.  
 
So, like I said, look for the 'freight trains' and consider segregating the devices involved to avoid crossing uplinks between switches.  Or at least be ready to look for it and plan around it if/when you run into oddball slowdowns.

Link aggregation is great, in theory.  In practice it's sometimes problematic.  Even when gear claims to support it there's still often minute configuration details that get overlooked.  This is where 10gbe GBIC cards sort of 'absolve you' of worrying about aggregated link configuration.  
 
The gear mentioned seems unlikely to be problematic, but I'd research it in detail BEFORE trying it.  Oh, and if you decide to aggregate, seriously consider getting cables colored differently from the rest and zip tying them together.  You never know what you'll forget about over time.  Seeing two cables, tied together and in a different color helps give you a heads up.

Thanks again fellas.  @Work2Play - we have pretty decent internet here:
 
325Mbps Down and 10+Mbps Up
 
Still not sure we are saturating the LAN in the manner you describe.  I am also not certain but pretty sure the SG100-24 switches do not allow for aggregation in any case.
 
I think I have settled back to grouping the users along the Home Office and Home use lines and keep each group on its own switch.  The bulk of the home use is either direct to the internet and to the media server so keeping this together on one switch seems practical.