Networking advice - routers/switches

[Lee]

Hi all....
I'm tasked with moving a TV/media player that is wired in to a Cat 6/gigabit network at home. Currently there is 1 router with 1 switch - to save re-routing a bunch of cables, I'm planning on adding a second switch....

My question - does it make any difference to speed/reliability if the second switch connects to the first switch or directly to the router??

TIA

[mithrandir]

Lee, an extra device in the path is an extra potential point of failure. Given that, I've never had a home switch fail while it was powered up - only when it had been sitting in the cupboard after long use.
Given the price of gigabit switches, daisy chaining another one is a simple solution. You don't need a crossover cable and won't notice the time it takes to store-and-forward packets.
My recent experience? We've just moved into a house that isn't ethernet cabled, the BigPond router (4 gig ports) is not in the room where the NAS and my PCs live, and so I had a cat6 run though the wall and terminated wth wall plates for my gig switch. The PVR and BluRay are on the other side of the house and plugged into an 802.11n extender.

[DavidNg]

My experience: one router, many switches in any configuration- no problems with speed and reliability.

I notice that manually set IP address is also more reliable than auto set.

Cheers
David