Are router WAN/LAN ports that used as LAN ports on the same network and subnet?

Peter is right,

this is shooting a bird with a nuke…

Usually the LAN Ports are on the same subnet , but i guess a beast like this will allow setting up VLAN´s too on the LAN and WLAN side. These are made for heavy traffic public or business Access point , not at all for home use…

Harry

For what it's worth: I had a truly horrible experience with a failing "Cisco" small biz switch. I have never seen a switch fail in a way that caused it to actively flood (mis-formed) packets onto a network. Until then.

I love Cisco gear. I've got a rack-full of Cisco switches at work. But it's got to be real Cisco gear.

I'm not sure I 100% understand your configuration, but when I setup MY station (which is far simpler than yours), my goal was to isolate my PC, Flex and Maestro on their own switch… all by themselves. This way, they never contend with anything else that's going on in my network for (switching) bandwidth.

So, in contrast to what I think you said your goal was (a couple of posts above), MY goal is to keep the radio-related traffic all on its own switch. And, because it really isn't high bandwidth, just about any reputable switch will do (I, personally, have had good luck with the Netgear ProSAFE switches).

That exactly what I recommend.

Put JUST your radio-related stuff (including PC) on its own little switch… connect this switch back to the router. The switch will directly connect the systems that are communicating.

The data moves pretty fast, so you will find that even if it has to go all the way back to the router/switch, you won't notice the difference. You can easily test this using Ping and watch the response time.

Oh, quite right. It's not AT ALL about the DISTANCE your data's travelling. It's not like we need to get shorter Ethernet cables so we don't add extra latency 😂

My guru's tell me a star topology is by far the most reliable

In general, in a commercial environment, all things being equal and ignoring special requirements… I agree with @Mike-VA3MW. Corollary: Less hardware is good. There's less stuff to break. Less hardware means less expensive capital cost. And, when there's trouble, you don't have to go looking for the forgotten switch that some genius stuffed in the ceiling 5 years ago. Every drop is a home-run. Simple. This is how my company's offices are cabled.

But as Mike says, it depends on what you're trying to optimize.

In a home network, a star topology can require running A LOT more cable. Running cable in a home network can be particularly problematic: We don't usually have dedicated data raceways and risers. Thus, network cable winds up getting intermixed (parallel to) with the electrical service… which is bad for noise. Longer cable runs provide an opportunity for introducing other noise/disturbance on the cable.

Using a star topology in a home also requires that your central switch have enough horsepower to handle the maximum traffic you'll generate without introducing latency, blocking, or dropping packets. In a world where a lot of us have Internet speeds that exceed 1Gbps (sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot), and maybe even have high-speed LAN segments, that can mean you need a pretty beefy central switch. Also, what a lot of folks don't consider is that things can get ugly anytime your switched ports need to do "speed adaptation" (such as when you're coming from a port at one speed and going out a port that's a different speed). This means the switch may not be able to use "cut through" routing and has to resort to store and forward. Which introduces latency and potential packet loss.

So… that's why I say that there's really no need to trouble your central switch with your special-purpose, time-sensitive, radio-to-Maestro and PC traffic. Cable your PC, Radio, Maestro, Amp, and Tuner to a nice little switch. They'll talk to each other, point to point, right there on the switch. You can see the lights dance in front of your eyes. And only the things that need to actually go to the Internet get sent up to your central switch.

This way your household members can be on Zoom, watch Netflix in 4KUHD, and copy an ISO from your NAS to your PC at 2.5G or even 10G, all without having any potential for impacting your time-sensitive radio traffic.

+1 to everything Peter said. And then make that uplink from the radio network to "the internet" be a fiber link, with everything on the ham side on its own power supply, connected to nothing else in the house, and bonded to the house ground only outside the house — and you will be a happy ham!