Easy Gig-E Questions

[superkdogg]

I'm thinking of making the jump to 1000Mbps at home and just have a few basic questions. I have searched some other threads and got some good information, but I need a little more specific to my situation.

As I understand it, using a 10/100 router as my internet access would not be a hindrance on the LAN side, true?

Assuming the above is correct, I have 4 desktops and a laptop (irrelevant for this conversation) that I want to be able to use the 1000Mbps switch. So I need a 5 port Gig-E switch (at least, 8 would also be good) what are the recommendations for a decent, not high-end but not junk unit that fits these parameters?

Finally, the reason that I'm doing this is becuase I want to set up a network file server to keep documents and other important data on a RAID-5 array accessible by the other computers. What is the consensus on how much of a difference (if any) that I'll notice by upgrading the network from the standard 100Mbps? For regular home/home office use would this project be a money sink, or a valuable time saver?

We usually transfer small files like word docs and spreadsheets, occasionally install programs from .iso's on the server, and store everything important on the RAID-5 array.

 

[Madwand1]

Here are some of my answers regarding the jump to gigabit. I think it should be regarded as the current standard. You can see my reasoning here and judge for yourself further:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=36&threadid=1898728&enterthread=y

You should probably get an 8-port switch -- because you'll lose one port to the link to the router, and might want some more GbE ports for future expandibility. BTW, you can also concurrently use the 10/100 ports on the router for additional slow capacity.

Relatively modern switches advertised as "non-blocking" with a total bandwidth / packet switching spec that matches the GbE port count are likely to be fine from a performance standpoint. Moreover, even with a RAID array, you stand a good chance of being HD /etc. bottlenecked, and not at the switch level. Tools like iPerf and PCATTCP can tell you what your raw network is capable of. Real file transfers will give you composite performance which will typically be much lower, but still significantly faster than 10/100.

I've used a D-Link DGS-1008D and gotten very good performance. Now > 118 MB/s raw TCP/IP throughput (using PCATTCP), and > 90 MB/s actual file transfer performance without using jumbo frames.

I suspect that comparable SMC and Netgear switches, probably among others, would be just fine.

Note also that you can test some of this for yourself without a switch using a direct wire connection -- even straight though, which the gigabit standard allows. Direct wire connection is also a reference for switch performance.