Doe's performance degrade if you daisy chain switches?

[rasmasyean]

If you have a router, and connect a switch to it, and connect a switch to that, what effect does that have on the computer that is connected to the end of that vs. one that is connected to the router?

 

[Sedril]

You definitely lose a bit each time you split, even with powered hubs. And there usually is a limit, at a certain point you will begin to have problems with connectivity. You're better off getting longer cables if your issue is placement of devices in relation to the router/modem.

 

[Zepher]

I have a cascaded network here at home, router to a switch, then to another switch, and all the machines have been working great, speeds are great and no issues with the network.
Ideally you want to have everything connected to one switch but sometimes it's not possible.

 

[kegobeer]

You definitely lose a bit each time you split, even with powered hubs. And there usually is a limit, at a certain point you will begin to have problems with connectivity. You're better off getting longer cables if your issue is placement of devices in relation to the router/modem.

No, you aren't better off getting longer cables. A powered switch is a great way to overcome the length limitation, and there is little to no loss.

To the OP: there is no impact in the situation you described.

 

[Sedril]

I do IT, and have run into problems switching too many times, so there is in fact times when it is better to use longer cables and less switching. Switching a couple times isn't a problem, but go too far and longer cables will work better, trust me, I've done it first hand many times.

 

[cluberti]

Each switch is a hop that a TCP or UDP packet has to take, which can introduce latency (ARP lookups, etc). If we're talking about 2 or 3 switches, I'd say it shouldn't be noticeable if the switch backplanes are capable of handling the load across them (aka, perfect working scenario). If you're talking about a huge switched network, however, then I'd say it would indeed be noticeable. At that point the network would likely be segmented and routed, which introduce delay and latency simply due to how they work (again, assuming they're working properly and are scaled well for the traffic they'll handle, just like a network's switching fabric).

 

[pparks1]

There is no hard and fast rule for how many switches you can chain together, unlike the old hub days which were govered by the 5-4-3 ethernet rule.

With a switch based network, when you daisy chain too many switches together, the issue will become that people more close to the resources will get better performance that those further down the chain. Most notably, it will become the uplinks between the switches that get saturated and cause this performance issue.

In the example you have provided, you will not see any performance degradation that you will be able to quantify. In business settings, most often different builds, floors, etc are all chained together with multiple switches to the network backbone and these work out just fine. You will have no issues.

 

[Zepher]

I do IT, and have run into problems switching too many times, so there is in fact times when it is better to use longer cables and less switching. Switching a couple times isn't a problem, but go too far and longer cables will work better, trust me, I've done it first hand many times.

you may have had faulty equipment.
Before we decided to purchase a router with 4 Gigabit ports on it, we had a D-Link Router hooked to a Netgear Gigabit switch with 1 PC and HP 4500 color laser downstairs, a 100 foot run upstairs to a D-Link Gigabit switch with 2 PC's, then from that D-Link to 10/100 switch for an Xbox 360 and to another D-Link in another room with 2 more PC's, Samsung Color Laser, and an Xbox 360 hooked up.
Ran the above setup for about 2 years with no issues.

 

[rasmasyean]

Maybe in "IT" you sometimes don't realize that other ppl have plugged in all sorts of devices into your various levels of switches. Therefore, it's not really the cascaded switches that cause performance issues, rather it's the trees of computers, etc. connected to that original port.

So you would have to compare 1 100 ft router connected computer with 1 shorter switch-switch-router connected computer with nothing else in that tree. But if your department ordered those switches to begin with, you prolly seldom find that lonely leaf in practice.