Two Switches vs. one Switch?

Question

We are doing an upgrade in our office from 10 and 10/100 hubs to switches. I was told to look at getting two switches for load
balancing. Here is my question. Why two? Wouldn't I be better off
buying one 16 port switch instead of two 8 port switches?

Answer 1

well yes, you could just buy a 16 port one, but if you are using 18 computers then you want to get one with an extra port for the cable that connects the two routers together.

i would rather suggest a 24 port router then this gives you free ports that are ready for any expansion plans that you may have later on.

Answer 2

The processor and RAM used for packet switching on a 16 port corporate switch should be able to handle 16 simultaneous connections as long as the switch is in a well ventilated room just below room temperature (18ºC/68ºF). You can go with two 8 if you want (if its cheaper). There is some truth to what you're saying if the operating conditions are not ideal.

The downside of two 8 ports is that you lose a port when running a cable between the switches - so instead of 15 available ports on a 16 port switches you would only get 14 available ports on two 8 port switches.

Stick with a single 16 port switch unless it's too much money. You should get gigabit (1000/100/10) or ten gigabit though. You would need to upgrade your cable infrastructure to cat6e cable though. At least have the link between switches at 1000 mbit because most corporate switches can handle multiplexing 100Mbit PC connections and linking them to another switch or gateway at 1000Mbit speeds (ie get gigabit switches and replace the cable between switches with Cat6e).

Answer 3

You will generally get better performance with one switch. The connection from one switch bottlenecks all the machines from it to the other. I changed one setup from 2 eight ports to a 24 port switch, and added another 5 machines and the network became faster. Load balancing would require separate connections to the server or router, and generally this gives no real improvement.

Answer 4

As a switch connects the machine sending to the machine receiving DIRECTLY as opposed to a hub that sends data to everything, a 16 port switch will be QUICKER as no extra steps in the system
If you can manage it, go for a gigabit switch to futureproof yourself, as they are dropping in price now'

Answer 5

It depends on your configuration, and of course, where your bottleneck is. They may be presuming that the bottleneck is in your firewall. In this case, rather than routing all internet traffic though a single firewall, you might have something like this:

..INTERNET
...........|.........
....SWITCH
....|.............|
FIRE.....FIRE
WALL...WALL
....|............|
...SWITCH
.........|
LOCAL NET

But that's just a guess... without more information, it's hard to know just which load they're trying to balance. Balancing only applies if you have a shared resource that can be duplicated to allow balancing to occur... and it's only worthwhile if that shared resource is likely to be a system bottleneck... or likely to fail regularly.