Much performance hit going through two switches?

OK, would appreciate quick responses as I'm actually in the middle of making a big mess and a lot of hard work in putting another cable through the house.

Heres the setup.

Basement - Modem router
Me and my brother - two levels up.

We've got a cable running up from the basement through the sitting room and to my brothers room (via my room)

I'm in the middle of taking all the books of the massive solid wood bookshelf when the hard work made me think, I could just attach the cable thats already there to a switch in my room and then have that going to me and my brother. But would that hit the performance much? Would it actually improve performance in file transfer between me and my brother?

Just wanted to check before I spend the whole night lugging bookshelves around. :)

For your internet connection this would not be a problem as even 8Mb is nowhere near what one cable can deal with 100Mb from switch.

Yep :) thought so. A development to the idea would be to get a switch that acted as a wireless AP too giving better signal upstairs any recommendations?

Cheers.

I don't know if it would improve performance of file transfers between you and your brother, but it's not going to hurt it.

my guess is it'll add a couple of ms delay to each of the packets, so nothing major at all.

regarding the WAP/Switch, is there much data transfer between you and your brother, large file transfers etc?

it might be worthwhile investing in a gigabit switch and attaching a cheap WAP to it also. just food for thought:)