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Do Orbi satellites act as unmanaged switches? (e.g. RBS50)
Hi,
This might seem like an obvious question but I haven't been able to confirm one way or the other through documentation. I've recently bought the RBK53 for my household and planning to have one of the satellites in my office. If I connect multiple devices to the satellite's 4 avaliable gigabit ethernet ports, will those devices communicate at gigabit speed (as if they were plugged into a switch)? I would have thought so (and hope so) but there may be a good reason why they wouldn't.
Re: Do Orbi satellites act as unmanaged switches? (e.g. RBS50)
Most networking devices and the switches on Orbi work as a switch. The switch depending upon configuration and destination will directly traffic to the destination device. If the two devices are on the same RBS, then the traffic should go directly to the connected device, not the the RBR then back to the RBS.
Re: Do Orbi satellites act as unmanaged switches? (e.g. RBS50)
The connection rate supporting on all Orbi systems is 1000Mbps on the RJ45 jack. So if you have wired LAN devices that support 1000Mbps then they will connect to the RBS at 1000Mbps. This is a connection rate only between the device and the RBR/RBS. This is not the same as actual data flow speeds which differ.
Re: Do Orbi satellites act as unmanaged switches? (e.g. RBS50)
Thanks for the quick response! What you're saying makes sense - so if two devices were plugged into the same satellite via RJ45 (both devices capable of gigabit ethernet) and say you wanted to copy a file from one to the other. Would that data go from the device to the satellite at 1000Mbps (or whatever the real world speed is), from the satellite to the main router over WiFi (or ethernet backhaul if configured), then back again to the satellite before going to the other device (that final leg being 1000Mbps)?
Or does the satellite act a bit like a switch, allowing the two devices to communicate "directly" without the need for all the data to flow via the router?
Re: Do Orbi satellites act as unmanaged switches? (e.g. RBS50)
Most networking devices and the switches on Orbi work as a switch. The switch depending upon configuration and destination will directly traffic to the destination device. If the two devices are on the same RBS, then the traffic should go directly to the connected device, not the the RBR then back to the RBS.
Or does the satellite act a bit like a switch, allowing the two devices to communicate "directly" without the need for all the data to flow via the router?
When you find out, please post the results. Here's a suggestion for an experiment: Use the Orbi "debug" feature to capture LAN traffic for a short period while two devices on the satellite are communicating with each other. The debug log produces two separate capture files: WAN traffic and LAN traffic. Supposing you have a packet analyzer such as Wireshark, if the LAN file includes packets from that communication, then the packets obviously travelled to the router. If those packets are not in the capture file, then the router did not see them.
Set up your test procedure. i.e. two devices connected to the satellite ready to transfer a file (stream a video?).
On the Orbi debug page http://<ip of orbi>/debug.htm, click the box "Enable LAN/WAN packet capture", then click "Start Capture". A notice should pop up saying, "Debug log capture in progress"
Begin the file transfer and continue for a couple of minutes.
End the file transfer
On the Orbi debug page, click on "Save Debug Log". The browser will do whatever it does when you download a file. In my case, a window pops up asking if I want to Open or Save the file, I choose Save and it goes into my Windows "Download" folder.
This will be a ".zip" file file called "debug.log". Inside the zip file is a bunch of interesting stuff, including files named "LAN" and "WAN". Extract the file you want to look at.
At this point, you need a packet analyzer program and see if it captured packets during the file transfer.
Oh, dear. This may be overwhelming. I currently do not have two computers wired to my satellite. I will set up a test and see what happens, but it may take some time.
Re: Do Orbi satellites act as unmanaged switches? (e.g. RBS50)
Thanks for those steps CrimpOn, I will test it out and happy to post the results just to confirm what FURRYe38 says, but will be a little while before I can as moving house at the moment (hence the need for a new WiFi/networking solution)!
Re: Do Orbi satellites act as unmanaged switches? (e.g. RBS50)
I just did a little experiment. Wired my Raspberry Pi and a Windows laptop directly to the RBS50, setup a debug capture, and did about 20 pings with the Pi responding to pings from the laptop. The log contains the ARP request asking, "where is the Pi?" and then zero ICMP packets from either the laptop or the Pi. So, I conclude that the ICMP query and response packets go between two ports on the satellite and do not go to the router. It is indeed a tiny 4-port ethernet switch (as it should be).
p.s. Doing a debug capture is not for the faint-heated. Brings up a LOT of questions I would rather not be thinking about. Like, why are there so many ICMP requests between the satellite and the router? Why do they say, "destination unreachable"? And, much (much) more.
I just did a little experiment. Wired my Raspberry Pi and a Windows laptop directly to the RBS50, setup a debug capture, and did about 20 pings with the Pi responding to pings from the laptop. The log contains the ARP request asking, "where is the Pi?" and then zero ICMP packets from either the laptop or the Pi. So, I conclude that the ICMP query and response packets go between two ports on the satellite and do not go to the router. It is indeed a tiny 4-port ethernet switch (as it should be).
p.s. Doing a debug capture is not for the faint-heated. Brings up a LOT of questions I would rather not be thinking about. Like, why are there so many ICMP requests between the satellite and the router? Why do they say, "destination unreachable"? And, much (much) more.
My RBS50 has WiFi backhaul. (The joy of living in a 50-year-old two story house.) Should not make a difference, but would be a lot more bother to run a 50 ft. ethernet cable down the hall, down the stairs, across the room, etc. I actually did this when I was experimenting with Orbi WiFi backhaul vs. wired backhaul. (wired is better, hands down. wish I could do it.)
