Installing and Setting Up a Home Network Switch: A Step-by-Step Guide

I recently upgraded my home network by installing a new switch, which has made a significant difference in my internet speeds and overall network performance. In this article, I'll take you through the process of setting up a switch to your existing network, including how to troubleshoot common issues and optimize your network for better performance.

First, let's start with the basics. A home network switch is an essential device that connects multiple devices to your router, allowing them to share a single internet connection. The switch acts as a hub, routing data between devices and providing a faster and more reliable connection than using Wi-Fi alone. Now that I have my new switch installed, let's take a look at the different ports available on each of my devices.

I have my Synology NAS storage connected to the switch, which takes up two Ethernet cables for the best possible speeds. This allows me to connect multiple devices directly to the switch, rather than relying solely on Wi-Fi. My computer is also connected to the switch via an Ethernet cable, providing a stable and fast connection for online activities.

Now that I have all of my devices connected to the switch, it's time to check if everything is working properly. To do this, I'll open up my router settings and view the list of connected devices. This will show me which devices are currently connected to the network via Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Next, I'll use a tool like Speedtest.net to test the speeds of my internet connection.

I plug my laptop into the switch using an Ethernet cable and run a speed test. The results show that my Wi-Fi speeds are around 240 megabits per second download, which is close to my advertised gigabit-per-second speed. However, my upload speeds are significantly slower at only 35 megabits per second.

To put this in perspective, the ping time is 11 milliseconds, which is very fast. The download speed is 261 megabits per second, and the upload speed is 41 megabits per second. Next, I plug my laptop into the switch using an Ethernet cable to test its speeds. As expected, the results show significantly faster speeds than Wi-Fi - a whopping 700 to 750 megabits per second download.

I'm thrilled with the results of being plugged in with the switch over Ethernet versus just using Wi-Fi. The upload speed is still relatively slow at 41 megabits per second, but it's much closer to my advertised gigabit-per-second speed than my Wi-Fi speeds were. With this upgrade, I'm confident that my internet speeds will be fast and reliable for all of my online activities.

One of the main reasons I've upgraded my switch is to prepare for fiber internet installation. Once I have fiber installed, I'll need to replace my current modem with a new one designed specifically for fiber internet. To do this, I simply unplug the Ethernet cable from the old modem and plug it into the new fiber modem.

This will instantly increase my speeds to 1000 megabits per second download and upload - significantly faster than what I have now. As soon as I can get fiber installed and set up correctly, I'll be enjoying some of the fastest internet speeds available.

If you're considering setting up a switch to your network or adding Ethernet cables to your devices, I hope this guide has been helpful in providing you with the information you need. Remember to always follow safety precautions when working with electrical devices and to consult the user manual for specific instructions on setting up your particular router and modem.

Finally, if you have any further questions about installing a switch or adding Ethernet cables to your network, feel free to ask in the comments below. I'll be happy to provide additional guidance and support as needed.

By following these steps and tips, you can optimize your home network for better performance, faster speeds, and improved reliability. Remember to always prioritize your internet connection's quality and take steps to ensure that it meets your needs - whether that means upgrading to a new switch or adding Ethernet cables to your devices.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enif you were to ask me the question brett what is one of the biggest technological advances that you've seen in your day i would have to say the transition from using a 56k modem going to broadband and now using the wi-fi fiber connections that we have today is definitely the best thing that i have seen in my lifetime now i love wireless internet i love that i can just have a router plugged right in here into my modem and then it broadcasts a signal throughout my home so any of my devices can instantly connect to that now using the wi-fi or the wireless network is not always the best option even though it's so easy to use you are not able to get as fast as speeds if you are plugged directly into the router so in today's video i'm going to show you how you can add a switch to your router so that you can then plug in devices so that you have a direct connection to the internet let's get started hey everybody welcome to tech with brett where i help tech work for you so let me show you my network room so there's a lot going on here but let me simplify it a bit so you know what is happening so first we have the internet that is coming into the home now for me i am using a coaxial internet connection so right here this is the modem that is receiving the internet so the internet comes in through this coaxial line it plugs into here and then it gives me the internet into the home now it does have a wi-fi router built into this but i like to use my own wifi router so is what i've done is this blue cable is then plugged in and it is taking the internet to here which is my nest wi-fi so here on the bottom you can see the blue cable is plugged into here so it's then giving internet to my wi-fi router and then i can control this and this broadcasts the internet throughout my whole home so i have another wi-fi point upstairs that meshes with this so then i can simply find my wi-fi ssid or my wi-fi name type in my password and then those devices can connect directly to this but now i want to add some devices by plugging them in to my router well one of the biggest issues with the new types of wi-fi or wi-fi points is on the bottom there's only an import for the internet and one out port so if you had a laptop you could plug the laptop directly into here and it's going to get as good of connection as possible because it's pretty much tied directly in to the router and tied into the modem but if you're like me and you have all of these different devices is what you want to do is you want to plug in something that other devices can connect to so here i have plugged into the nest wi-fi this cable goes into here which is called a switch so then the cable comes down here and it comes around and it comes through and is plugged in right here on the first port of the switch so what the switch allows you to do is now plug in any devices because the switch is going to put the internet through all of these different ports and then they can all be directly connected to the internet so that's the simplest way to explain how that works and now you can then plug in devices that require an ethernet connection so here i have a philips hue hub it is required to be plugged in so it is plugged from here right into here next i'm using a lutron caseta wireless hub it's plugged in here's the white cable here and it's plugged in one of these and then here i have samsung smart things v2 so the version two so it's plugged into here and then the other ports that are plugged into here are connections that are going to other devices so i have my smart tv plugged directly into here or i have my nas storage plugged directly into here and the list of devices just keeps going and going because you want to have the best internet connection at some of these locations now that we're doing a lot of 4k content you want a good quality connection sometimes wi-fi is not the best and wi-fi can't always get to certain locations maybe if it's in the basement or maybe it's it's behind a concrete wall it's not going to get great wi-fi so that is when you want to get a switch and then wire a ethernet cable to those different locations so that you can then plug them directly into here so today i'm actually going to install a brand new switch this is an eight port switch so one of the ports is used for in the other seven is used for out but as you can see i have some extra cables here i want to route a few more things over uh ethernet so i'm going to upgrade my switch to a 16 port switch let's go ahead and swap this out and put in my new 16 port switch all right so here it is this is a tp-link 16 port gigabit desktop switch now i've been pretty impressed with my tp-link switch in the past so i think this will do the job and this is definitely a business solution you might not need this many ports at your house but it is available if you want so plug and play that means there's no setup required all we need to do is plug it into the internet plug in our devices and they'll be ready to go has exquisite metal casing wall mounting green technology traffic prioritization and multicast optimization and then down here it will show you how it works so we have the internet or our modem we have a router so here we have the nest wi-fi router and then we plug that directly into here and then you can plug in your computer your game console your nas or your iptv and this will support up to a gigabit connection so 1000 megabits per second and it can provide up to 32 gigabits per second non-block switching capacity i don't know what any of that jargon means but those are the specs and here you can see a few more it's 16 port by 10 by 100 by 1000 megabits per second it has jumbo frame fanless design power leds so the leds will be green if it's a gigabit port and they'll be orange if it's only getting a hundred megabits per second and there are dimensions and so on so inside the box we get a power cable i didn't drop it we get an installation guide down here we have some feet and here we have the switch now this feels really nice it's built out of some really nice material here we're going to mount it right there on the wall so we're going to plug the nest wi-fi into the first port here and then i'm going to plug in the rest of the ethernet cables right into here and you will see a little green icon indicating they are receiving internet when they're plugged in on the other end and then over here on the back you do have a secure lock option and the power cable goes in right there all right so here we have the first item which is our nest wi-fi and then we're just going to go through and start plugging in all of our different ports so now we have the router pushing the internet over here to the switch and now everything that is plugged in here is going to get the internet it has been a few days since i installed my new switch i did some rearranging um the way i had this oriented didn't actually fit on the screw holes properly so i did put that on a side note i wish there were screws that came in the box but there aren't so now i have everything plugged in up here and you'll see at the top all of the things that are connected are flashing a color so the ones that are flashing orange they're 100 megabit per second or less and then the green ones are getting a gigabit per second connection and down here you can see that some of them are not flashing and that's because the other end has nothing plugged in this is just for future expansion i have some rooms where i have ethernet cables there but nothing is plugged in currently on that side and then over here on the other end of this i have a chromecast ultra plugged in and i thought it was getting a gigabit per second connection but it looks like it's not i did plug in my computer over there and this turned green showing it was working properly and there's nothing wrong with the cable but now you can see i have all of my different devices plugged directly in and uh so far it's working great now you're probably asking why i have so many hubs well that's going to be another video for another day but let's go ahead and check out to make sure that all of our hubs are working properly check out the speeds of the internet and see if everything is running fine over on the other side now here's a look at the end of those ethernet cables so it's coming to this little port i then have the ethernet cables plugged into there and then going to my different devices so one of the examples is i have my synology nas storage here where i have two ethernet cables coming into here for the best speeds possible so that takes up a few different devices and then the next one is coming over here in to my computer so let's go into our wi-fi settings right here you can see i still have my wi-fi points and i have my 65 different devices that are connected so then if i open this up it's going to show us all the devices so it's actually going to show all the devices connected over wi-fi and then if we go down here we can even see the different devices that are connected over the switch so they're not just showing up as one switch it's showing those devices as well so now let's go and check something like our philips hue hub so here if we go into the philips hue app we're going to head into the settings and here you can see that our bridge is connected now it may say disconnected and you might need to come and push the button but so far it's working great now if all of your devices are showing they're not connected i would recommend rebooting the router after you have everything set up on the switch so that it can then see all of those different devices now let's do a speed test comparing wi-fi to plugged in over the ethernet now i'm using my laptop here because my desktop doesn't actually have a wi-fi connection so i'm unplugged right now just head to speedtest.net and let's go through the speed test so my wi-fi speeds are actually pretty good i pay for a one gigabit per second connection and right now i'm getting 240 megabits per second download now let's check the upload and the upload i only get 35 megabits per second upload but let's see how it fares so it's getting that max speed that it can get on the upload so so far wi-fi has actually been okay and here are the results 11 millisecond ping 261 megabits per second download and 41 megabits per second upload so let's go ahead plug this in and then see how it fares and you'll know you're plugged in because down here instead of it being a wi-fi connection it will show a little computer with a connected icon just like that and then you'll also see over here on my little adapter it is flashing indicating that it is plugged in to the switch so let's do a test again and the speeds are much much faster so right now it's showing 700 to 750 megabits per second so i'm getting what i actually pay for instead of half over wi-fi i mean that was pretty fast over wi-fi but i might as well get the best beats possible and again the upload it's getting its max speed of 41 megabits per second and the final results there are 11 milliseconds ping 633 megabits per second download and 41 megabits per second upload so i'm very pleased with the results of being plugged in with the switch over ethernet versus just using wi-fi now one of the other main reasons that i've upgraded the switch so that i have more items plugged in because pretty soon i'm going to be upgrading to fiber internet where i can get speeds of 1000 megabits per second download and upload and i do a lot of uploading here so i want to make sure that i have the best speeds possible now as soon as i can get fiber installed and i have the fiber modem all i will need to do to upgrade to it is unplug the ethernet cable from the current modem i have plug it into the fiber modem and all of my speeds will instantly increase and so i'm really excited for when that can happen and i've already done the work for my entire network beforehand now if you have any further questions about installing a switch to your network and have any other questions about adding ethernet to your different devices please let me know in the comments below and if you want to see how i set up my nest wi-fi you can check out the video over here on the side thank you so much for watching we'll see you on the next oneif you were to ask me the question brett what is one of the biggest technological advances that you've seen in your day i would have to say the transition from using a 56k modem going to broadband and now using the wi-fi fiber connections that we have today is definitely the best thing that i have seen in my lifetime now i love wireless internet i love that i can just have a router plugged right in here into my modem and then it broadcasts a signal throughout my home so any of my devices can instantly connect to that now using the wi-fi or the wireless network is not always the best option even though it's so easy to use you are not able to get as fast as speeds if you are plugged directly into the router so in today's video i'm going to show you how you can add a switch to your router so that you can then plug in devices so that you have a direct connection to the internet let's get started hey everybody welcome to tech with brett where i help tech work for you so let me show you my network room so there's a lot going on here but let me simplify it a bit so you know what is happening so first we have the internet that is coming into the home now for me i am using a coaxial internet connection so right here this is the modem that is receiving the internet so the internet comes in through this coaxial line it plugs into here and then it gives me the internet into the home now it does have a wi-fi router built into this but i like to use my own wifi router so is what i've done is this blue cable is then plugged in and it is taking the internet to here which is my nest wi-fi so here on the bottom you can see the blue cable is plugged into here so it's then giving internet to my wi-fi router and then i can control this and this broadcasts the internet throughout my whole home so i have another wi-fi point upstairs that meshes with this so then i can simply find my wi-fi ssid or my wi-fi name type in my password and then those devices can connect directly to this but now i want to add some devices by plugging them in to my router well one of the biggest issues with the new types of wi-fi or wi-fi points is on the bottom there's only an import for the internet and one out port so if you had a laptop you could plug the laptop directly into here and it's going to get as good of connection as possible because it's pretty much tied directly in to the router and tied into the modem but if you're like me and you have all of these different devices is what you want to do is you want to plug in something that other devices can connect to so here i have plugged into the nest wi-fi this cable goes into here which is called a switch so then the cable comes down here and it comes around and it comes through and is plugged in right here on the first port of the switch so what the switch allows you to do is now plug in any devices because the switch is going to put the internet through all of these different ports and then they can all be directly connected to the internet so that's the simplest way to explain how that works and now you can then plug in devices that require an ethernet connection so here i have a philips hue hub it is required to be plugged in so it is plugged from here right into here next i'm using a lutron caseta wireless hub it's plugged in here's the white cable here and it's plugged in one of these and then here i have samsung smart things v2 so the version two so it's plugged into here and then the other ports that are plugged into here are connections that are going to other devices so i have my smart tv plugged directly into here or i have my nas storage plugged directly into here and the list of devices just keeps going and going because you want to have the best internet connection at some of these locations now that we're doing a lot of 4k content you want a good quality connection sometimes wi-fi is not the best and wi-fi can't always get to certain locations maybe if it's in the basement or maybe it's it's behind a concrete wall it's not going to get great wi-fi so that is when you want to get a switch and then wire a ethernet cable to those different locations so that you can then plug them directly into here so today i'm actually going to install a brand new switch this is an eight port switch so one of the ports is used for in the other seven is used for out but as you can see i have some extra cables here i want to route a few more things over uh ethernet so i'm going to upgrade my switch to a 16 port switch let's go ahead and swap this out and put in my new 16 port switch all right so here it is this is a tp-link 16 port gigabit desktop switch now i've been pretty impressed with my tp-link switch in the past so i think this will do the job and this is definitely a business solution you might not need this many ports at your house but it is available if you want so plug and play that means there's no setup required all we need to do is plug it into the internet plug in our devices and they'll be ready to go has exquisite metal casing wall mounting green technology traffic prioritization and multicast optimization and then down here it will show you how it works so we have the internet or our modem we have a router so here we have the nest wi-fi router and then we plug that directly into here and then you can plug in your computer your game console your nas or your iptv and this will support up to a gigabit connection so 1000 megabits per second and it can provide up to 32 gigabits per second non-block switching capacity i don't know what any of that jargon means but those are the specs and here you can see a few more it's 16 port by 10 by 100 by 1000 megabits per second it has jumbo frame fanless design power leds so the leds will be green if it's a gigabit port and they'll be orange if it's only getting a hundred megabits per second and there are dimensions and so on so inside the box we get a power cable i didn't drop it we get an installation guide down here we have some feet and here we have the switch now this feels really nice it's built out of some really nice material here we're going to mount it right there on the wall so we're going to plug the nest wi-fi into the first port here and then i'm going to plug in the rest of the ethernet cables right into here and you will see a little green icon indicating they are receiving internet when they're plugged in on the other end and then over here on the back you do have a secure lock option and the power cable goes in right there all right so here we have the first item which is our nest wi-fi and then we're just going to go through and start plugging in all of our different ports so now we have the router pushing the internet over here to the switch and now everything that is plugged in here is going to get the internet it has been a few days since i installed my new switch i did some rearranging um the way i had this oriented didn't actually fit on the screw holes properly so i did put that on a side note i wish there were screws that came in the box but there aren't so now i have everything plugged in up here and you'll see at the top all of the things that are connected are flashing a color so the ones that are flashing orange they're 100 megabit per second or less and then the green ones are getting a gigabit per second connection and down here you can see that some of them are not flashing and that's because the other end has nothing plugged in this is just for future expansion i have some rooms where i have ethernet cables there but nothing is plugged in currently on that side and then over here on the other end of this i have a chromecast ultra plugged in and i thought it was getting a gigabit per second connection but it looks like it's not i did plug in my computer over there and this turned green showing it was working properly and there's nothing wrong with the cable but now you can see i have all of my different devices plugged directly in and uh so far it's working great now you're probably asking why i have so many hubs well that's going to be another video for another day but let's go ahead and check out to make sure that all of our hubs are working properly check out the speeds of the internet and see if everything is running fine over on the other side now here's a look at the end of those ethernet cables so it's coming to this little port i then have the ethernet cables plugged into there and then going to my different devices so one of the examples is i have my synology nas storage here where i have two ethernet cables coming into here for the best speeds possible so that takes up a few different devices and then the next one is coming over here in to my computer so let's go into our wi-fi settings right here you can see i still have my wi-fi points and i have my 65 different devices that are connected so then if i open this up it's going to show us all the devices so it's actually going to show all the devices connected over wi-fi and then if we go down here we can even see the different devices that are connected over the switch so they're not just showing up as one switch it's showing those devices as well so now let's go and check something like our philips hue hub so here if we go into the philips hue app we're going to head into the settings and here you can see that our bridge is connected now it may say disconnected and you might need to come and push the button but so far it's working great now if all of your devices are showing they're not connected i would recommend rebooting the router after you have everything set up on the switch so that it can then see all of those different devices now let's do a speed test comparing wi-fi to plugged in over the ethernet now i'm using my laptop here because my desktop doesn't actually have a wi-fi connection so i'm unplugged right now just head to speedtest.net and let's go through the speed test so my wi-fi speeds are actually pretty good i pay for a one gigabit per second connection and right now i'm getting 240 megabits per second download now let's check the upload and the upload i only get 35 megabits per second upload but let's see how it fares so it's getting that max speed that it can get on the upload so so far wi-fi has actually been okay and here are the results 11 millisecond ping 261 megabits per second download and 41 megabits per second upload so let's go ahead plug this in and then see how it fares and you'll know you're plugged in because down here instead of it being a wi-fi connection it will show a little computer with a connected icon just like that and then you'll also see over here on my little adapter it is flashing indicating that it is plugged in to the switch so let's do a test again and the speeds are much much faster so right now it's showing 700 to 750 megabits per second so i'm getting what i actually pay for instead of half over wi-fi i mean that was pretty fast over wi-fi but i might as well get the best beats possible and again the upload it's getting its max speed of 41 megabits per second and the final results there are 11 milliseconds ping 633 megabits per second download and 41 megabits per second upload so i'm very pleased with the results of being plugged in with the switch over ethernet versus just using wi-fi now one of the other main reasons that i've upgraded the switch so that i have more items plugged in because pretty soon i'm going to be upgrading to fiber internet where i can get speeds of 1000 megabits per second download and upload and i do a lot of uploading here so i want to make sure that i have the best speeds possible now as soon as i can get fiber installed and i have the fiber modem all i will need to do to upgrade to it is unplug the ethernet cable from the current modem i have plug it into the fiber modem and all of my speeds will instantly increase and so i'm really excited for when that can happen and i've already done the work for my entire network beforehand now if you have any further questions about installing a switch to your network and have any other questions about adding ethernet to your different devices please let me know in the comments below and if you want to see how i set up my nest wi-fi you can check out the video over here on the side thank you so much for watching we'll see you on the next one\n"