Author Topic: Network setup question - Gigabit  (Read 4135 times)

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Offline mackbig

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Network setup question - Gigabit
« on: November 14, 2011, 07:26:39 AM »
I was thinking about upgrading my network setup.  I dont "need" a new router, but had a questions about a basic setup.  I was looking at my network the other day, its anything but basic.  Cant believe I started a several years ago with a single 4 port wired dlink gateway.  Its now a wifi Linksys 150N - 4 wired ports, with a 5 port switch in the office, and an 8 port in the basement with two additional wifi N access points (apple airport expresses).  But the wired parts are all 10/100.

See the attached basic diagram.  The question is, with this new theorectical setup will pc1 and pc2 talk to each other at Gigabit speed?  Or because the router (which assigns the IP's via DHCP) is 10/100 be a bottleneck?

Thanks
Andrew


Andrew - Davis VP2+ 6163, serial weatherlink, wireless anemometer, running Weather Display.  Boltek PCI Stormtracker, Astrogenic Nexstorm, Strikestar - UNI, CWOP CW8618, GrLevel3, (Station 2 OS WMR968, VWS 13.01p09), Windows 7-64

Offline DaculaWeather

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2011, 07:44:15 AM »
They will talk to each other at gigbit speeds. The switch is intelligent enough to back down on the speed if the other end can't do it.

Offline mackbig

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #2 on: November 14, 2011, 07:53:17 AM »
Thanks Steve,
That is what I expected, just want a second or third opinion.

I have my router tweaked just the way I like it, so I am hesitant about making the change there, I will I just need to make sure I have all my tweaks logged.

Andrew

Andrew - Davis VP2+ 6163, serial weatherlink, wireless anemometer, running Weather Display.  Boltek PCI Stormtracker, Astrogenic Nexstorm, Strikestar - UNI, CWOP CW8618, GrLevel3, (Station 2 OS WMR968, VWS 13.01p09), Windows 7-64

Offline C5250

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #3 on: November 14, 2011, 08:39:21 PM »
That's pretty much the way mine is setup, except I have two gig switches and the router also handles the wireless.

Unlike a hub, a switch only sends packets to the port the destination can be reached via. So the router would not even see packets between the two computers.

Your biggest bottleneck will be Windows, I have yet to see a Windows PC do better than about 1/4 of the theoretical gig speed.
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Offline DaculaWeather

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #4 on: November 15, 2011, 06:03:44 AM »
Your biggest bottleneck will be Windows, I have yet to see a Windows PC do better than about 1/4 of the theoretical gig speed.

Boy, do I agree with that!

I saw throughput studies done years ago between Windows servers and Novell servers and it wasn't even a contest. Windows was MUCH slower, from a NIC I/O and a disk read/write perspective.

Offline mackbig

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #5 on: November 15, 2011, 12:01:05 PM »
Thanks Keith,
I guess a quarter theoretical is better than 100 max.

My biggest transfers will actually be between a mac and a gigabit rated NAS.

Honestly I was just trying to come up with xmas list ideas.  Was in Costco Friday and they had the Cisco e3000 for $99, so then I started thinking about my switches as well.  I need a switch just for my home theatre now, all the new stuff is LAN enabled.  Most of it is wifi, but I like wired when possible, and my theatre is right above my LAN room.

Andrew


Andrew - Davis VP2+ 6163, serial weatherlink, wireless anemometer, running Weather Display.  Boltek PCI Stormtracker, Astrogenic Nexstorm, Strikestar - UNI, CWOP CW8618, GrLevel3, (Station 2 OS WMR968, VWS 13.01p09), Windows 7-64

Offline DaculaWeather

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #6 on: November 15, 2011, 12:12:22 PM »
I wish I had cables running all over my house but I don't. I am going to get the cable guy to come out and move the cable modem downstairs where my home theater stuff is. He has to run a new line to do it though.

Offline mackbig

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #7 on: November 15, 2011, 12:31:02 PM »
I was lucky.   My first house (with a network) I spent hours, over several days pulling wire up to attic, then down into my home office.  ( couple of cat5e, and rg6 catv, and phone).  The LAN room was in basement.

My current house, we planned on demo'ing the kitchen before moving in, part of that was a wall removal.  That wall happened to be right under the bedroom we were going to use as an office.  So while I had the walls ripped open I pulled a bunch of cable up to that bedroom.  It was very easy with wall open, straight run, no corners...   Basement is unfinished so any main floor drops I need are very easy.

I started off with modem in basement feeding upwards, but when I added a wifi router I figured it would be better on 2nd floor.  I guess now that I have AirPorts everywhere its kind of redundant, but redundancy is good in networking.

Andrew

Andrew - Davis VP2+ 6163, serial weatherlink, wireless anemometer, running Weather Display.  Boltek PCI Stormtracker, Astrogenic Nexstorm, Strikestar - UNI, CWOP CW8618, GrLevel3, (Station 2 OS WMR968, VWS 13.01p09), Windows 7-64

Offline Bushman

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #8 on: November 15, 2011, 12:38:16 PM »
Your biggest bottleneck will be Windows, I have yet to see a Windows PC do better than about 1/4 of the theoretical gig speed.

Boy, do I agree with that!

I saw throughput studies done years ago between Windows servers and Novell servers and it wasn't even a contest. Windows was MUCH slower, from a NIC I/O and a disk read/write perspective.

It does not take much to get 900 mbs on a connection. BTDT  But you need a  64 bit PCI slots  capable of 532MB/s on a 66MHz bus.  Some DWORD tweaks for TCP parms and you are good to go.  But in a vanilla state, I agree - both Windows and Linux high speed transfers are not great.
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Offline C5250

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #9 on: November 15, 2011, 05:33:16 PM »
I guess a quarter theoretical is better than 100 max.

Oh, yeah. It's still 2-3 times faster than 100, without any tweaking, which is noticeable. I look at as having plenty of bandwidth on the network so more than one thing can use it. Besides, unless you have a raid array, you can't get data off a drive fast enough to saturate a gig link.
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Offline Bushman

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #10 on: November 15, 2011, 06:36:54 PM »
I guess a quarter theoretical is better than 100 max.

Oh, yeah. It's still 2-3 times faster than 100, without any tweaking, which is noticeable. I look at as having plenty of bandwidth on the network so more than one thing can use it. Besides, unless you have a raid array, you can't get data off a drive fast enough to saturate a gig link.


Some info that might be of use to you on how to get more bandwidth. BTW, I had to do a bunch of this since my kid is xfering video files all over my  network.   http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netsysm/article.php/3485486/Squeeze-Your-Gigabit-NIC-for-Top-Performance.htm
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Offline C5250

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #11 on: November 15, 2011, 09:24:36 PM »
Some info that might be of use to you on how to get more bandwidth. BTW, I had to do a bunch of this since my kid is xfering video files all over my  network.   http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netsysm/article.php/3485486/Squeeze-Your-Gigabit-NIC-for-Top-Performance.htm

That's the basics. How the Ethernet adapter is connected to the chipset will make the biggest difference. Do be careful with some of those settings though, as they could slow down your internet speed. I would never suggest increasing the MTU, in fact many people may need to reduce it (DSL for example). That can be tested by pinging a site with the -f switch, if the ping fails, you need to reduce your MTU. Increasing the window size can be helpful, although less so with newer OS's (especially Windows) and again, one needs to be careful as too large may cause issues with some/slower internet sites. Finding the "right" balance is the tricky part.
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Offline Bushman

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #12 on: November 15, 2011, 09:48:55 PM »
Yes, it is tricky.  But from an intranet perspective (not DSL) MTU can and does make a difference.  There is so much hype on gigabit that one does need to take  the advertizing with a grain of salt.  And maybe a small does of tweaking.
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Offline C5250

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #13 on: November 15, 2011, 10:28:47 PM »
There is so much hype on gigabit that one does need to take  the advertizing with a grain of salt.  And maybe a small does of tweaking.

Not so much hype, more a mentality where one whats the full gig speed between two computers and goes extreme trying to get it. That can cause other issues. I prefer a balance and, like I mentioned above, like to think it is fast enough and there is enough bandwidth for more than one thing to be going on.
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Offline mackbig

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #14 on: November 28, 2011, 08:45:11 AM »
So I got some cat 6 to do the new runs to my home theatre.  I pulled the cable up through the wall.   Went to do my first termination....  The brown and the orange are almost the same color.  The whites dont have any colour on them.   Put them under a bright light, the "brown" is slightly darker, very slightly. I guess between the slight colour variation, and the "tape" between the two sets of pairs should be ok....   I know the cablers can pretty much do this in their sleep, but must be tough with this new setup, good thing I only need to do 4 terminations.

Andrew

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Offline C5250

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #15 on: November 28, 2011, 05:12:05 PM »
Gigabit uses all 4 pairs.
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Offline mackbig

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #16 on: November 28, 2011, 05:50:52 PM »
I know.  I actually always punch down all 8 wires.  My point was that with this cat 6 wire I got (SYSTIMAX® 71E Series GigaSPEED® XL Cable)  the brown and orange look very similar.  Its because the coating is translucent, so the orange coating is darkened by the copper underneath.  Figured it out, the brown is always on the "blue" side off the tape, and with bright light you can see its slightly darker.  So got 3 of 4 terminations done, noticed I was a bit aggressive with my stripper and nicked a few of the pairs, so did it all again.  Both runs are working fine.

Now I just need my gigabit switch and the new AV components to go with it.  Waiting for Santa...  :lol:

Andrew



Gigabit uses all 4 pairs.


Andrew - Davis VP2+ 6163, serial weatherlink, wireless anemometer, running Weather Display.  Boltek PCI Stormtracker, Astrogenic Nexstorm, Strikestar - UNI, CWOP CW8618, GrLevel3, (Station 2 OS WMR968, VWS 13.01p09), Windows 7-64

Offline C5250

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #17 on: November 28, 2011, 09:18:33 PM »
LOL, I read that as you where only going to terminate 4 conductors.
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Offline mackbig

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #18 on: January 05, 2012, 08:10:09 AM »
Well I am gigabit now.  Got the parts need as xmas presents.  It was pretty easy.  Longest task was setting up my DHCP reservations, and making the router swap over.  Still only took 10 minutes of downtime as I configured from my laptop while the old router was still hooked up.   Its too bad Cisco/Linksys did not have an upgrade facility, I online chatted with them just prior to doing to make sure they did not.  The gui on the e3000 is pretty much identical to my "old" wrt150n, so it would be nice if common type settings could be exported then imported to new device somehow.  The wireless was a bit wonky.  My devices didnt like the new router a first, and the dual band was confusing as to which one I should be looking for, or if they shoudl have the same ssid.   Luckily I have an apple airport that provided me wireless on my laptop during the process.

My only hickup was that my weather pc would not connect as gigabit.  But that was user error.  I have so many cables up in the weather shack, I thought I had the pc plugged directly into old router, but it was still plugged into a 4 port 100 switch.   ](*,)   So when I moved all the cables during the router swap, it was not gigabit'ing.

The speed is much faster.  But as some of you indicated the os must be the bottleneck.  I tested using my mini mac to gigabit NAS, and also up to my Weather pc.  Transfers that should technically take a few seconds are coming in around 30-40 seconds now.

new setup
Cisco Linksys E3000
SE2800-CA 8 port switch
Still have a 4 port 10/100 switch in weather shack room for slower devices like ip cams and work laptop and the old 8 port 10/100 in basement feeding other devices around the house.

My "LAN room" in the basement looks more like a cockpit with all the flashing lights now.

Andrew

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Offline DaculaWeather

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #19 on: January 05, 2012, 09:13:10 AM »
Sounds like you're wired!  :grin:

Offline C5250

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #20 on: January 06, 2012, 11:42:28 PM »
Well I am gigabit now.

I'm sure you'll find it a worthwhile upgrade. It may not be quite as fast as a direct Firewire or eSATA connection, but it's good enough to to almost get that.

The speed is much faster.  But as some of you indicated the os must be the bottleneck.  I tested using my mini mac to gigabit NAS, and also up to my Weather pc.  Transfers that should technically take a few seconds are coming in around 30-40 seconds now.

A handy utility is netcps it is a good tool to test the actual connection as it only transfers data from memory, so it's not limited by disk access speed.

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Offline mackbig

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #21 on: January 07, 2012, 06:12:31 AM »
Thanks I will check it out.  My only problem is that my three main gigabit devices are my mini mac, my weather pc, and my NAS.  So only one of those I can install the program on.

I guess I could put the program on my laptop, and the weather pc, and then test the drops for the mac and the nas, by plugging the laptop into those drops....

Andrew

A handy utility is netcps it is a good tool to test the actual connection as it only transfers data from memory, so it's not limited by disk access speed.

Andrew - Davis VP2+ 6163, serial weatherlink, wireless anemometer, running Weather Display.  Boltek PCI Stormtracker, Astrogenic Nexstorm, Strikestar - UNI, CWOP CW8618, GrLevel3, (Station 2 OS WMR968, VWS 13.01p09), Windows 7-64

Offline Cienega32

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #22 on: January 09, 2012, 01:35:32 AM »
My "LAN room" in the basement looks more like a cockpit with all the flashing lights now.



... but it's pretty cool in the dark, right?  8-) :lol:

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Offline DaculaWeather

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Re: Network setup question - Gigabit
« Reply #23 on: January 09, 2012, 06:30:17 AM »
Where i use to work we had a server room with racks of switches, and servers etc... I use to take my kids in there and turn out the lights. They thought they were on a spaceship!

 

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