Matt’s Desk: Editor’s Blog

Our homes are filled with more devices that connect to the internet – and each other – than ever before.  Many, such as laptops, tablets, smartphones and printers, can live by wireless alone; but there are also devices that greatly benefit from (or even require) a direct, wired Ethernet connection: smart TVs, game consoles, streaming video players (Apple TV, Roku, etc.) NAS storage drives, VoIP telephone adapters and home security systems.

Problem is, most wireless routers – the gizmos that share a modem’s internet connection with both wireless and wired devices – usually have only four onboard Ethernet ports (those highlighted in yellow in the image above).  Connect a desktop, game console, TV and VoIP adapter, and you’re slap out of ports.  If this is a problem you’ve run into, you may be asking yourself if it’s time to buy a new router with more ports.

Answer: probably not.  If you’re happy with your router’s wireless performance, all you need for additional ports is an Ethernet Switch.

In this article, I’ll introduce you to Ethernet Switches, show you how to use them to expand a LAN, help you choose the right model for your needs, and give a brief overview of how to best configure your network with a switch.

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In an ideal world, a NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive would be connected to every computer in your home via Ethernet cable for fast data transfers; in reality, however, most of your NAS connections are probably going to be over Wi-Fi.

And even if you have a 300Mbps 802.11n Wi-Fi router – the fastest standard currently available – you’re never going to actually see this only-on-paper wireless transfer rate, so moving large files – or large collections of files – onto your NAS can take forever. 

So, here’s a simple tip for saving yourself tons of time and tumult when getting gigs of data copied to the NAS: use a direct LAN connection.

To illustrate, say you have (as I do) a 60GB collection of audio files on your PC that you want to offload to the NAS.  Moving this data to the network drive via Wi-Fi can take hours. On my home Wi-Fi network, I started the transfer before going to bed; it was still limping along when I woke up the next morning.

If you have a home network with multiple computers and other connected devices (smartphones, tablets, game consoles, media players, etc.), you probably also have files you’d like to easily share between them.  From music, video and photos to plain old data files like Word and Excel documents, data sharing can be an incredibly convenient tool.

Most home users access files between systems by sharing a drive or folder on one computer, then connecting to that shared location from another.  And for light data sharing this is absolutely fine.  But if you’re a more demanding shareoholic with gigabyte upon gigabyte of files to share across multiple systems, there’s a much better way:

Network Attached Storage, or NAS.

A Network Attached Storage drive is a hard drive like any other, except instead of connecting to computer via USB or SATA, a NAS connects directly to your network hub (usually a wireless router) via Ethernet cable.  Once connected, this drive is accessible over the wired or wireless network by any computer or supported device on that network.

Say, for example, you have a large iTunes library spread across multiple PCs and/or Macs.  Using a compatible NAS, you can forget trying to keep each computer’s individual iTunes library up-to-date with your latest downloads and CD rips; NAS allows you to centralize the data files so that each computer always has access to the complete library, and new additions are instantly updated and accessible for every computer on the network. 

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We all know that wireless Ethernet connectivity, or Wi-Fi, is standard on modern notebooks, smartphones and tablets – but what do you do when you want to add a desktop PC to an existing Wi-Fi network?  Few desktops ship with Wi-Fi onboard, and adding the technology can be confusing for the uninitiated.

But making your desktop Wi-Fi capable is actually pretty simple, with two primary hardware solutions: USB and expansion card.

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