GIGABIT LAN make a difference on HOME LAN

[jtsnow]

Will I experience faster exchange then with 100baseT? Is there a bottle
neck limitation the PC that limits the max amount of effective throughput to
the point where it wont make much difference to hang a GIGABIT LAN around
it? I have 4 PCs on a home LAN I was considering doing this for to improve
HD backup times I do to a server and to help with shared bandwidth issues we
are starting to see with the kids playing online games, backups and such.

Any thoughts to suggest if this its worth the trouble to swap out NICs and
router?.

Thanks!

 

[Noozer]

Will I experience faster exchange then with 100baseT? Is there a bottle
neck limitation the PC that limits the max amount of effective throughput to
the point where it wont make much difference to hang a GIGABIT LAN around
it? I have 4 PCs on a home LAN I was considering doing this for to improve
HD backup times I do to a server and to help with shared bandwidth issues we
are starting to see with the kids playing online games, backups and such.

Any thoughts to suggest if this its worth the trouble to swap out NICs and
router?.

Using gigabit, I can see up to 250m/bit transfers over my LAN here. If my
switch would support jumbo frames I'm sure it would go faster.

 

[kony]

Will I experience faster exchange then with 100baseT?

Most certainly. Even poor/old machines with bad
implementations can expect 2-4X the throughput, providing
the source and destination devices (like HDD) can keep up.

Is there a bottle
neck limitation the PC that limits the max amount of effective throughput to
the point where it wont make much difference to hang a GIGABIT LAN around
it?

Well it won't make much difference if you don't share large
files, stream multimedia, etc. Even so for the slight price
difference it's worth consideration for it's future
potential, but not worth upgrading an existing 100Mb LAN if
one didn't have the throughput needs.

I have 4 PCs on a home LAN I was considering doing this for to improve
HD backup times I do to a server and to help with shared bandwidth issues we
are starting to see with the kids playing online games, backups and such.

Generally online games do not have any bandwidth issues at
all, a 100Mb LAN is MUCH more throughput and lower latency
than the internet beyond it, and the games are generally
designed with this in mind, don't usually need high speed
networking to work fine. Perhaps you have something
unusual?

Backups can certainly be helped by GbE. If you're moving
around Gigabytes of data frequently, don't even think about
it any longer, get GbE.

Any thoughts to suggest if this its worth the trouble to swap out NICs and
router?.

No need to swap out the router. Gigabit routers are
expensive still too. You can get a Gigabit switch (some
prefer one that supports jumbo (~9K officially) frames) and
just set it on top of the router or wherever it's more
appropriate. Run one port from the Gigabit switch to the
(100Mb?) router and you're done, there should be no reconfig
of the router necessary.

 

[jtsnow]

nice input...thank you

Most certainly. Even poor/old machines with bad
implementations can expect 2-4X the throughput, providing
the source and destination devices (like HDD) can keep up.


Well it won't make much difference if you don't share large
files, stream multimedia, etc. Even so for the slight price
difference it's worth consideration for it's future
potential, but not worth upgrading an existing 100Mb LAN if
one didn't have the throughput needs.



Generally online games do not have any bandwidth issues at
all, a 100Mb LAN is MUCH more throughput and lower latency
than the internet beyond it, and the games are generally
designed with this in mind, don't usually need high speed
networking to work fine. Perhaps you have something
unusual?

Backups can certainly be helped by GbE. If you're moving
around Gigabytes of data frequently, don't even think about
it any longer, get GbE.


No need to swap out the router. Gigabit routers are
expensive still too. You can get a Gigabit switch (some
prefer one that supports jumbo (~9K officially) frames) and
just set it on top of the router or wherever it's more
appropriate. Run one port from the Gigabit switch to the
(100Mb?) router and you're done, there should be no reconfig
of the router necessary.

 

[William W. Plummer]

Will I experience faster exchange then with 100baseT? Is there a bottle
neck limitation the PC that limits the max amount of effective throughput to
the point where it wont make much difference to hang a GIGABIT LAN around
it? I have 4 PCs on a home LAN I was considering doing this for to improve
HD backup times I do to a server and to help with shared bandwidth issues we
are starting to see with the kids playing online games, backups and such.

Any thoughts to suggest if this its worth the trouble to swap out NICs and
router?.

Thanks!

Assuming you have compatible interface cards on all machines and router,
you will see an increase in transfer rate *IF* you are doing bulk data
transfers. Keystrokes are sent one character per packet and the
network must settle down for 2 round-trip times between packets and this
will limit the number of packets per second you can get through the
network regardless of how big or small they are.

 

[DaveW]

There are no home version GigaBit routers available, so, NO, it won't
improve anything.

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

There are no home version GigaBit routers available, so, NO, it won't
improve anything.

There are a lot of gigabit switches in the stores now, looks like you
haven't been shopping for a while.

As for the original question, the performance is going to vary widely
depending on your systems. A server class motherboard with fast processors
and a 64 bit PCI/server class NIC and a RAID disk subsystem can get close
to wire speeds (i.e. close to a gigabit). An Nforce 3-250 Ultra or GB
AMD54 system should also be able to do wire wire speed assuming that you
have a RAID system that can do 100Mbytes/second. If you have an Nforce
3-250 Ultra with a single disk then the disk is going to be the
bottleneck, figure 400Mbits/second at best. An older desktop bus with a 32
bit PCI bus and a 32 bit NIC will only do around 200-300 Mbits/sec.

 

[DevilsPGD]

There are no home version GigaBit routers available, so, NO, it won't
improve anything.

So? Drop in a gigabit ethernet switch and connect it to your router.
Since the router won't exceed 100Mb anyway you can live with the 100Mb
limit on that port.

 

[William W. Plummer]

In message <[email protected]> "DaveW" <[email protected]>
wrote:




So? Drop in a gigabit ethernet switch and connect it to your router.
Since the router won't exceed 100Mb anyway you can live with the 100Mb
limit on that port.

Even a GB LAN plus routers won't improve the response time of the
computer on the other end of your connection. It still has a slow disk
on it, so key-activated applications or mouse-clicks won't get processed
any faster. "Buying Specs" is not wise.

 

[kony]

Even a GB LAN plus routers won't improve the response time of the
computer on the other end of your connection. It still has a slow disk
on it, so key-activated applications or mouse-clicks won't get processed
any faster. "Buying Specs" is not wise.

Even by your own prior post that seems subject to scrutiny.
You wrote:

"Keystrokes are sent one character per packet and the
network must settle down for 2 round-trip times between
packets and this will limit the number of packets per second
you can get through the network."

With GbE, each packet travels faster. What you describe as
being such a slow process, will make the difference between
the two even more significant, wouldn't it?