Using an ethernet switch to put 3 hubs and hue bridge on
I can think of no reason that putting 3 hubitat hubs and a hue hub on the same switch would be a bad practice.
I want to say the Hue and Hubitats are all 10/100, so any modern switch should work fine. Heck, any old switch should work fine.
I have 4 Hubitats, 1 Hue, a Fingbox and a number of Subswitches on a 24 port 1 GbE switch....
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This is exactly what switches are for; connecting multiple devices with Ethernet to your LAN.
What is it that you’re concerned about?
I know the speed will not be affected like a splitter, I just wanted to know if any other quirks or problems that might happen
Oh and will they still have their own 198.168. XX numbers
Use a plain unmanaged switch, and it'll be totally fine. Each device will still have its own unique IP just as if it was the only thing plugged into your router.
In fact, the only thing plugged into my router is my first switch (which has 2 more downstream switches plugged into it, along with my HE, Hue bridge, Caseta bridge, RedLink bridge).
Been that way for many years and no issues at all with any of my switches or ethernet devices.
The only negative would be a sing point of failure for all of your Home Automation, but i suspect most of us are guilty of that at home.
I wouldn't worry about it though.
Are you suggesting a 3-level network setup? With a disaster recovery site?
Yeah, I should add, tongue-in-cheek comments aside.... a single point of failure is still a genuine concern, albeit a minor one in home automation, like @mavrrick58 acknowledged... Also, I would expect switch failures are likely rare enough to not warrant an off-site failover
But thinking about some of these base concepts that play a part in more commercial or corporate setups feels more appropriate the more I expand my own HA setup, but mine is probably more complex than the average commercial user...
That is how mine have been setup for many years now. No issues.
Mitigated by the fact, at least in my case, that I have never had a switch fail, ever. I'd call switch failure a "don't worry, practically never happens" concern.
Now, the "Family member accidentally unplugs router" risk, that is a real thing, at least in my house. Happened once, of course while I was away and wife was home alone, and the troubleshooting experience was the worst experience (for both of us) in our entire marriage. Took us over 45m to figure it out, especially difficult in that she kept mistaking the NAS for the router, since they both were black and both had LED lights on them.
They will get the exact same DHCP or reserved IP address service they would get if directly connected to the router. No issue there.
Pretty much the same thing here...I have just a couple devices directly connected to the router, all the rest in switch-land.
Thank you all for your help, I will now go ahead and buy one
Fooled another one, this is so much fun.
It should be noted: I avoid Netgear switches. They have been known to not work especially well with Hubitat hubs. I have used TP-Link in the past mostly without issue, and currently am using a few Linksys SE3008 8-port switches. They have been extremely reliable for the past couple years. I have a Home Assistant server, 3 HE hubs, and 2 Hue bridges attached (and obviously many other things).
Really, that's interesting, I only have Netgear switches and haven't had any issues. Not to say others haven't or that you are wrong for raising it. Was there particular problems people had, e.g. poor connectivity / reliability? Anything I should be looking out for?
Hey, if that was your worst experience, I think you have led a pretty sweet life
I have two 16 port and I think an 8 port and two fours. I like netgear switches.
I just remember that some Netgear switches wouldn’t auto negotiate properly for 100. To those of you that have had a great experience with Netgear, I wish you continued happiness. I personally won’t be using Netgear products after my experience with 3 different models of Netgear routers that all had issues routing multicast packets, and couldn’t keep up with my Gb internet, requiring frequent reboots. I have had zero issues with my current setup going on 3 or 4 years now and specifically haven’t had any Homekit, AirPlay, or AirPrint issues, which were my biggest headaches previously.
And the same to you...
It's hard to argue (not that I want to) with having tried
If you've found something that works for you, no point deviating from that.
Thanks for capturing the issues you had.
Ordered TP-Link, Amazon delivery due imminently