Not sure what you are trying to solve, but im sure its nothing a router wont be able to help with.
For example; a router with a single IP address (accessible by your software) can NAT that on the internal side to any one of your 4 devices depending on criteria; up or down, port numbers, anything at all.
Your client software could even connect to the router and force NAT configuration changes but i cant imagine why but this would accomplish the task.
There exists a type of high-speed logic switch that supports up to gig-E operation. It's designed for application such as a laptop docking station, where the Ethernet MAC is in the laptop, but is connected to either the physical port in the laptop chassis or the docking station.
However... even this may not meet your needs because it sounds like you're trying to do this outside the device (i.e., between the RJ-45 jack and the wall outlet). The switch in question is intended to sit internal to the circuit, either between the magnetics and the PHY module, or between the PHY module and the MAC module. I suspect the latter.
Now, if you want to develop a multi-port Ethernet widget with input and output ports, this may still be viable. But that starts to smell like an Ethernet switch with VLANs, which you say isn't allowable - the only difference being that you're switching electrical signals instead of conditionally forwarding at layer-2.
What if the device was actually a layer-2 Ethernet switch with VLANs, but limited by design so that none of the "network" ports could ever talk to each other? I.e., an Ethernet KVM switch, which on the interior is really a 5-port Ethernet switch chip with VLANs, controlled by a processor that only allows the PC's port to switch between the other VLANs?
There are several chip makers that offer 5-port and 8-port chips. Check out
Does it exist devices with several ethernet input LAN sockets and one output socket which enables me to select by software commands which input port to connect to the output? (Some kind of KVM switch but for ethernet).
At least 100 Mbps (CAT5 cable) compatible.
Thanks for hints on where I can purchase such devices.
"Quack" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
We have two separate networks, - and they need to be physically separate. No VLANs or other n layer features.
I want a switchbox which can connect a computer to ONE of these networks at a time just as when plugging this computer's NIC cable into the patch panel of each of these networks.
Instead of doing this manually I want a box which does for network connections what a KVM switch does for mouse/keyboard/video.
Thanks for urls to such devices - if they exists ;-)
There are analog switches with enough bandwidth to handle gigabit Ethernet. Usually you would put such a switch near the phy, though. Putting the switch outside, where you want it, could create a lot of problems. I am thinking of common-mode noise or ESD getting into the switch and destroying it.
But if you really want to make this widget, IDT makes a line of switches called "quickswitch," which may do the job.
Get an ethernet adapter for five or ten bucks, and set up the workstation to use either one or the other, depending on which network you use. They would be eth0 and eth1, and you can enable/disable them individually in the properties window, if you have superviser priveliges on the machine. I've got a machine with two adapters, and I use one when I boot Linux, that gets to the whole internet through the server, and the other when I boot Windows, and _that_ IP number is blocked to the outside so that that box can only see the LAN.
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Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
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