How Many Switches Can You Have in a Home Network?

hi everybody and welcome back on today's episode we're gonna answer an important question how many switches can you have in your network you're gonna find out next on the ultimate tech hub [Music] so how many switches can you have in a single home network and do multiple switches slow down your network well i'll answer both questions in a minute but a more important question is how many switches should you have in a single home network well this answer will vary depending on the size of your house and the size of your home network so for example if you have a three bedroom house and a family room and a living room and most new home builders will install one ethernet cable per room this would give you a total of five ethernet cables however if you install these cables yourself install two cables per room and when i say ethernet cables i mean cat 5e or cat6 cat 5v and cat6 are the most popular in the industry however cat6 has become the standard over the last few years so now we have five ethernet cables going to five different rooms and these five ethernet cables should originate from a network panel and in case you missed it i do have a video called where's the ethernet cable go and there'll be a link right here to that video so first in this network panel you should have an 8 port switch or a 10 port switch since most routers only have 4 lan ports you will definitely need a switch since you have five ethernet cables that you need to connect so now you have five rooms connected with ethernet cables to optimize this ethernet cable connection you should connect a five port switch to each room by doing so this will give you four more ports per room and these four extra ports will allow four more devices like tvs streaming devices gaming consoles another pc and this list can go on and on so you can see why it's important to have extra ports in each room so back to the original question how many switches can you have in a single network well there's no limit to how many switches you could have in a single network however the best practice would be to have one switch per ethernet cable and no more than that so at the end of each ethernet cable you can connect a switch and there's no real reason to have two switches for ethernet cable you could tether two together with a crossover cable but they do sell five port 8 port and even 10 port switches and then a single home network an 8 port switch or even a 10 port switch should be plenty of ports and we use tp-link and netgear for our switches and both are very reliable and connecting a switch to an ethernet port is very easy simply plug the switch into an outlet for power and plug your ethernet cable into the switch now if you have a five port switch you have an ethernet cable going into one port and now you have four more ports available for devices and if you need more than four ports then buy an eight port switch or even a ten port switch so back to our original questions how many switches should you have in your network and my best answer is one switch per room per ethernet cable and our second question do multiple switches slow down your network well technically yes however your switch most likely has a higher bandwidth than your internet connection so you'll most likely see no difference in uploads or download speeds for example i have a fiber connection with one gig speeds and i have multiple switches throughout my house basically one switch per room and i've had no issue with bandwidth uploads or download speeds so guys remember there's basically no limit to how many switches you can have in your single home network but the rule of thumb should be one switch per room per ethernet cable and there's no need to worry about these switches slowing down your bandwidth well guys we're all done here and i want to encourage you to visit our patreon page where two dollars a month can help keep this channel going and for every new member we'll do a personal shout out on the very next video and guys remember if you like these videos give a thumbs up and share it if you love them hit subscribe to keep this channel alive thanks again for watching you