[Tfug] Switches -- and hubs!

[Bexley Hall]

Hi,

I'm trying to replace most of the specific wiring in the
house with <everything>_over_IP.  While this has lots of
wins, it comes at the expense of requiring hub/switch to
be operational 24/7.

There are *lots* of drops in the house as it has to
accommodate various things in various places.  E.g., TV
might want to be in one corner of the room but the *phone*
will most likely *not* want to be colocated there; instead,
the phone would tend to be at the other end of the room
(since you typically *view* the TV from an opposite corner).

I.e., it is *easy* to come up with the need for two drops in
a given room.

However, it would be silly to connect all of the drops to
hub/switch "just in case" they might see use.  It makes more
sense to connect drops as needed (patch panel) so you can
size the hub/switch to your actual needs instead of your
*potential* needs!

However, even with this approach, it can also make sense
to use different switches/hubs for different drops.  E.g.,
those drops servicing VoIP phones can be handled by a
10Mbps *hub* (uses less power than a 10M switch, typically).

OTOH, serving video would probably prefer a 10M switch
(so you can have several streams active without needlessly
tying up the hub's bandwidth).

Likewise, connecting workstations might want to exploit a 100M
switch or faster.

So, it seems to me that the "right" approach is to put some
combination of switches/hubs by a patch panel and cable them
to the corresponding drops as needs change.

On a similar note, I keep most of my machines in the office.
Currently, interconnected with a 100M switch.  This is overkill
for most of my needs.

OTOH, there are times (tonight being one of them) where I might
have to move a few hundred Gb between machines.  This is painful.
Especially since the machines in question have Gb ports!

I've another switch with a pair of Gb ports.  I *think* these
are intended for uplinks.  But, I *think* I should still be able
to use them as regular ports?  I.e., the switch should still be
able to learn the right traffic patterns even though the
nodes on those ports are "just" workstations.

Can someone confirm this?

Thanks!
--don