Networking & wireless forum: Best network layout??

but I'm also trying to optimize a school network system that has 3 switches and a router and it's been a bit of an experience but here's what I found out. We have one switch with 48 100 Mbps ports and 2 gigabit ports, another with 24 (non-auto sensing) 100 Mbps ports with one switchable as an uplink and a 10 port gigabit PoE switch we're using for wireless APs. I'd thought that connecting the managed PoE switch to one of the gigabit ports on the 48 port switch would move traffic better through those two and so connected the router to the other gigabit port on the 48 port switch even though the router was only 100 Mbps. This just flat out didn't work reliably. What I finally ended up doing is similar to what you did. I connected these two switches directly to ports on the router and things have settled in well. We've a mix of fixed IP and DHCP assigned devices and the wireless side is all DHCP so I'm thinking it's direct connection to the router helped. The 3rd switch (24 port) connects only low priority devices with fixed IPs so I left it connected via the MDIX port to the 48 port switch for now. All this doesn't make that much sense to me but it's what's worked best. So far the best I can conclude is that networking is only 1% science and logic....the other 99% is magic.

do you mean through the internet or just other parts of the network within the building? Physical barriers are handled by using bridges. You mentioned a wireless router but not any wireless devices. Depending on the distance you want to cover, I presume the wireless router could connect to a bridge in a remote part of the network. If you mean accessing the network from home over the internet, that's going to be a different process.