So . . . if I connect a switch to a switch…and connect just my hi fi network items to that second switch . . . does that actually ‘isolate’ traffic on the the hi fi network from the rest of the traffic? These are unmanaged switches . . . no specific settings contemplated. Any benefit per se vis a vis network traffic ‘management?’
Hi Bart - by definition any switch will isolate (unicast) traffic from all its other segments or ports… so the data is isolated with one switch or 10 switches. Media transfer uses unicast address data. This shouldn’t be confused with broadcast or multicast data which is not used for media transfer.
Daisychaining makes no difference here - the only possible benefit of daisychaning is noise shaping on the twisted pair lines in the ethernet cable - but this will vary from switch to switch - but this has nothing to do with network performance or operation - but physical RFI and coupled clock noise.
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When a device is connected to a switch the first thing that happens is it registers itself with the switches internal memory so the switch knows it exists on a specific port. Any data targeted to your device can then be sent by the switch, as it knows where your device is. If you plug a second device into the same switch, it does the same. Now if your 2 devices try to communicate the switch knows where they are and limits how traffic is “switched” to make it efficient. The traffic it only sent between the correct ports. This is a fairly simplistic view but is fundamentally what happens.
Overall a switch does not really isolate your data traffic as elements such as broadcasts and multicast still go to all ports, and multiple switches exchange data about the devices connected to them. Switches are present to connect multiple devices and to target traffic between them, you would need managed switches and more advanced config to provide any isolation.
Hope that helps
I thought I had read that it’s “not good” to have “ALL your network traffic hitting your Naim player” and that essentially all traffic, to some extent, went to every device. And that perhaps putting some devices on one switch and some on another helped this. BOTH of these might be wrong it seems.
My other choice would be to connect both switches to my router…(which of course is in part just another switch). Any benefit to that vs. daisy chaining, or no difference traffic-wise.
It does, thanks!
no - who ever said that is incorrect or you might have mis understood. A switch directs only the relevant traffic to the device attached to the switch port. Thats the whole purpose of a network switch. In the olden days we used to use network hubs which operate a bit like how wifi does now - and all data went to every host, but that is relatively inefficient. Switches changed that and improved performance.
In a network there is also broadcast data - and this is traffic that goes to every host in a subnet - usually for network operation functions or sometimes discovery functions.
There is also the non local multicast data which is where data goes to groups of hosts. This can be filtered with higher quality switches that support IGMP snooping such that a host that doesn’t belong to a particular group doesn’t receive that group’s data. You may have seen my posts on this. Switches like Cisco Catalyst models support this by default… hence why I think they are a good buy.
However in both of these having one or say 10 switches makes no difference
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Thanks - great explanation!
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