Alternative RJ45 routing

[racerfern]

I have an HP miniPC that has served me well. However, if the router conks out, I'm still left disconnected from the z-net.

Can the z-net be connected directly to the PC avoiding the router? Then go wifi from the pc to the router? Or connect the z-net to a switcher to the PC, then another RJ45 to the router?

[sparkman]

A lot of PCs have two physical Ethernet ports. You could potentially use a second port and connect it to the z-net that way. You would need to set up static ip addresses on the z-net and the second PC interface. These ip addresses would need to be in a different subnet than your main interface. You could use a switch as well, but that would just create a different failure point. I don't see much advantage to that unless your router is unreliable. In that case I would replace the router with something more reliable.

Cheers
Al

[zwolfpack]

I have an HP miniPC that has served me well. However, if the router conks out, I'm still left disconnected from the z-net.

Can the z-net be connected directly to the PC avoiding the router? Then go wifi from the pc to the router? Or connect the z-net to a switcher to the PC, then another RJ45 to the router?

As Al says, you can set up a point-to-point interface between an unused port on the HS PC and the znet. This will allow the core z-wave functionality to work. However without additional configuration, the znet won't have internet access (needed if you want to download updates), and the web and ssh interfaces wouldn't be available from anywhere but from the HS PC. To get that you'd need to set up routing on both ends.

I believe this problem might be solvable by setting the HS PC as a network bridge. I don't know how well this works in Windows; this should give you a start:
https://www.google.com/search?q=netw...utf-8&oe=utf-8

But as Al says, network switches are pretty darn reliable... maybe more pain than gain...?

[racerfern]

Hmm, it seems like I'm inviting trouble through more a more complex setup. Thanks for the replies. Thanks to a recommendation from @zwolfpack my new router appears to be rock solid.