I am purchasing a home that provides wired cat5 connections to each room, allowing 10-20 wired connections. I will be using a wireless router that allows only 5 wired devices, ie: tv's, video game systems, computers. How do I add more ports to my wireless router to allow me to hard wire more devices?

You can purchase a Gigabit Ethernet switch and plug it into the router. If you need 20 ports, then you may need to step up to a business class switch. Netgear has a 24 port Gigabit switch: JGS24. It actually seems to be quite affordable.

Add more ports to router on network

3 Replies

TheEther
Guru
Nov 07, 2015
You can purchase a Gigabit Ethernet switch and plug it into the router. If you need 20 ports, then you may need to step up to a business class switch. Netgear has a 24 port Gigabit switch: JGS24. It actually seems to be quite affordable.
- Pnkoszut
  Aspirant
  Nov 07, 2015
  Would any particular type of unmanaged switch be more or less advantagous since I am connecting a variety of differrent types of devices such as Xbox's, computers, TV's and so forth?
  - TheEther
    Guru
    Nov 07, 2015
    There are features like QoS (802.1p), jumbo frame support, buffer size, and overall throughput that you can shop for. But for a basic, home environment, where the majority of use is going to be Internet access, then I'd say these features are not going to be all that important. They only significant if you do a LOT of data transfers between home computers.
    
    If you do end up buying a 24 port switch, it'll probably be a business class switch and will have a decent featureset, anyway.

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Add more ports to router on network