if I have 3 routers and 2 or 3 unmanaged switches all wired together, mostly daisy chained as far as I can tell, is the only concern looping?
won't collisions be an issue?
is there a better way to wire them?


the boxes are the different rooms the equipment is in.
all the switches are unmanaged.
all the routers are wifi enabled as well.

the best I think I can do is wire the routers to a switch then to another router instead of router to router.
but not sure it makes any difference in through put anywhere.

just wondering, as I mostly see posts about looping rather than collisions.

How many subnets are you running?  How big is this network?  Are you using the down stream routers as switches?  Is the last VPN box a VPN end point?
If the clients count is to scale (20 clients?), just go buy a cheap 24 port switch.

your routed and routing protocols may be a consideration

Collisions aren't an issue with switches; you're thinking about hubs.

Looping is an issue unless you have only single interswitch links or you are running spanning tree to block looped ports.  I'll assume unmanaged means cheap switches, so probably not spantree aware.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do, so I can't say if there is really a better design, but what you have would work.

What routers are those?

Why multiple routers?

Static routing or dynamic? What are the Layer3 boundaries?

Are you NATing, and if so where?

ah, sorry, wasn't clear.
this is my home network.

Att is the main router. has 4 ports.
ran out of slots, so I added a switch to give me more ports.

the router also wires to my home office, where I have a wireless router, also with 4 ports, but I changed the wan port to a lan port, so I have 5.
but again, I ran out of slots, so I added another switch there attached to that wireless router to add a vpn box work gave me to tunnel into work.

the last router wired to the att box is the upstairs router to add wifi upstairs where it is harder to get a signal.

that is why there are so many routers. and switches. as I add more wired devices, I need more ports, but they are not all in the same place.
all the wireless stuff I tried to interconnect wirelessly, but it became more of a pain to get coverage and get them to play nice.
the last one at the end hasn't been added yet, as I haven't run the line yet. but I realized today I could.
so I thought I would see if I left anything out funny.

I guess i was concerned with collisions from 5 things on a switch that only went to a single router port. or again, is that handled by the switch? maybe I am thinking about the hubs.
it is all 1 subnet.

I could clear out a router and replace it with a switch, but I already own this stuff, so I figured I would make due with it, unless I am causing myself a problem.
no switches are looped, and couldn't be with the placement. so I figure I am good there.

Stop using the wireless routers as switches and get a couple Trendnet's.  If you can run everything to a single location then get a single 16 or 24 port switch.  It's a pain to manage security on multiple routers unless you just have to.

As covered before, you can't have collisions on any switch.  That only was a concern with hubs.  On a switch, each switch port is it's own collision domain.

If you need to extend wireless coverage I'd recommend an AP or a wireless extender.  It should be easier to mange than multiple routers.

is it just security I am worried about having the routers? or do they not work as well as the switches? if it is just security, then I am good with manging them.
they just happened to get added on at different times and I didn't fully plan this out.
I will look to see where I can get rid of one if I can.

thanks for the link as well. I think I net gear and a buffalo one right now.

it is already like that.
all the routers have static addresses. the main att router is doing the dhcp, and it is turned off on all the others.

like I said, this wasn't planned, it just sort of grew over the years to be like this.

Routers have a different job than switches and operate at a different layer of the OSI model.  You use routers to cross networks, so if you have multiple networks, you need a router to act as a gateway.  Switches operate at layer2 and connect hosts to a single broadcast domain and use MAC address tables for efficient communication.  

In your situation, you only have a single network and a single LAN, with cheap unmanaged switches you don't have the ability to provision multiple VLANs, so we'll keep it simple.  It sounds like all you're using the routers for is the integrated switch ports.  Look, it's fine, but if you were buying bits from scratch, you only need ONE router here and the rest can/should be switches.

If you have a 4 port switch on the back of your router, you could cascade switches off of each port and it would work fine, as long as you didn't have any loops.

thanks.
it started out as just wireless coverage and then just grew weird as we got more wired "things".

I will remember to go the switch route as I need to replace items instead of new routers.

It's more confusing nowadays with the multifunction devices.  Your average home "router" is actually a router, a firewall, a switch and an access point.

Back when I started in IT, a router was just a router with out even an onboard CSU/DSU.  Switches were so expensive we only had one at a site with hubs connected to it to create multiple collision domains.

The reason you don't have to worry about collisions on switches is they are full duplex; send and receive on different pairs.  Hubs are half duplex so you can't send while you are receiving.  I'm sure you've heard the old analogy, half dup is CB/HAM and full duplex is telephone.

When I bouhgt my house, I wired each room with 2 Cat-5e drops and 1 co-ax and home runned it all into the basement on a demarc board. I have a 24 rt switch down there and I have 3 wireless access points throughout the house which all connect back to the switch.

Using an all in one device as a AP is fine as long as you don't use the "outside" interface and probably disable the firewall feature set, but you're not really going to get great performance compared to a purpose built AP.