how many sewitchs are required

[alvi]

dear friends
i am running my internet cable net

i am asking a question ?

how many switches can i inserted between two computers ?

i am feeling that the computers from for to me has slow speed as compure the near computers
i am runnign squid as proxy
how can i speed up net for those computers that are for from my server ?


i have listen from some sites that four switches are enough and if you will insrese switched then speed will go down

is it true

[sdousley]

from what i understand from your question, you are basically asking how many switches you can have in a row?

The distance between switches (using cat5e cable) can not exceed 100m, and the same for switch -> pc connections. But i guess this is more for use at home, so distances will not get greater than that.

Also, if the connection is going to be > 100m, you will need some sort of repeater. Yes, a switch does do this, but signals dont tend to go thru more than 4 or so switches very well due to the switches amplification it performs on the signal.

Of course all this is a guide, not a set rule, but going outside of this guide is highly reccomended AGAINST.

as for the speeding up of the connection, the only thing i can think is that if the squid proxy is running on a slow computer, then it will have trouble handling a lot of concurrent connections.