What is the best way to connect 3 switches with a router?

Posted by Carlos Morales on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Carlos Morales
Published on 2010-06-10T14:03:53Z Indexed on 2010/06/10 14:33 UTC
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router

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switch

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network

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to rebuild the network from my work and I was thinking what is the best way to connect three switches and a router.

The router has 4 ports so I thought to connect 2 switches to the router (each switch connected with 2 cables to the router) and then connect the third switch to one of the others with two cables. So is like this, two cables from switch one to the router, two cables from switch two to the router and two cables from switch 3 to switch 1 or 2.

So my questions are:

Is it better to connect the router to each switch with a cable or the more cables you have the better?

If I connect the switch 3 to switch 1 or 2 is it better to connect it with a cable or you get better performance with more cables.

If I'm wrong and there is a better or more efficient way to connect them please let me know.

The router is a Netgear RP114 (I'll upgrade it to a Sonicwall NSA 240), switch 1 is a Netgear GS748T, switch 2 is a Cisco Catalyst 2924-XL and switch 3 is a D-link DGS-1024D

Thank you very much

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