Wire the network: Wi-Fi for internet, the switch for the farm

FIXES → Renders crawling over office Wi-Fi, or Macs on the switch losing internet.

Per-Mac checks: ethernet link into the gigabit switch and Wi-Fi above Ethernet in Service Order, each with its fix — Captured from the real gateway on a demo farm

01 Cable every Mac into the switch

MacBooks need a USB-C→Ethernet adapter — check the box actually says Gigabit / 1000 Mbps; many cheap ones are secretly 10/100. The switch does not need to reach your router: even as an isolated island, Mac .local names still resolve over it, so the share just works.

02 Put Wi-Fi above Ethernet

On each Mac, open System Settings → Network → (⋯ button) → Set Service Order and drag Wi-Fi above Ethernet. That one move tells macOS: internet over Wi-Fi, farm traffic over the switch — automatically.

Done when Wi-Fi sits above Ethernet in Service Order on every Mac, and all Macs are cabled into the switch. Only ~1KB job files and finished MP4s cross the wire, so gigabit is plenty.