Gigabit Over Copper

[cruelpsycho]

Is anyone useing gigabit over copper network? If so can you tell me how much difference it makes? And i can find the pci adapters but not the switches or hubs. Can you tell me where to get them?

 

[Garion]

You'll probably find a lot of switches but probably never see a gigabit hub - Too much bandwidth for a collision-based half duplex network.

There's a lot of places making gigabit switches - Cisco just came out with a few, as have most of the other major vendors. They are, however, pretty expensive and designed for corporate use.

Also, most of the SOHO vendors (d-link, Linksys, Netgear) are coming out with gigabit over copper. I know that Linksys has a 8-port 10/100 switch with one 1000BaseT port and a PCI NIC package for around $250. Might check some other threads around - There was some discussions.

One more detail - nwfusion.com did a good review of gigabit NIC's - Found that the Intel one was, by far, the best. Not cheap, but the best.

- G

 

[cruelpsycho]

yeah i was looking at the d-link but its a 10/100 with 1000 up link only. but they have the 1000 cards so i dont understand what are they doing? sell the cards but not the switch???

 

[Garion]

Their description is kind of confusing (I assume you mean this switch)- they just mean it only has one 1000BaseT port - Pretty common for lower-end switches. Put one big server on the gigabit port and the rest of your network on the other 100BaseT ports. It's not like an uplink port on a hub that can ONLY go to another hub/switch.

- G

 

[cruelpsycho]

Yes thats the one. If i set the server up as you suggest it will increase the bandwidth flow to the server from the workstations, but will it have any effect on bandwidth flow between workstations?

 

[Garion]

If your workstations are on a 100BaseT Switch now you won't see any performance gains. If you're on a hub, yes, you probably will see a bit of a performance increase.

- Jason

 

[cruelpsycho]

Yes they are on a hub now and i see stalls when transfering file especially lage video files and when playing unreal tournament which has cost me some frags.

 

[Agamar]

Gigabit is really used better to connect two pieces of your lan. We are going with Gig over Cu to connect a top and bottom floor together. The bottom floor gets the main feed from a gig fiber, and we will use copper to get that speed upstairs to 72 more switched ports.

 

[cruelpsycho]

Well i wasn't going to redo my net work until next year but a cup of coffee changed all that lol. I am building my server now and was holding off on the network until i figured out what to get as far as switch and cards i read some reviews of the goc and with a 32bit pci slot they were getting 400Mbps. yeah i know not 1000Mbps but better than 100Mbps. so i will buy after the server is done and i make up my mind. i am running multi channel ISDN now after my upgrade i am moving up to cable or DSL.

 

[cruelpsycho]

Forgot to mention my cousin rents a house from me next door and his net is hooked to mine thats whay i was thinking of gigabit over copper so from the posts i recieved hooking these to nets to each other with GOC on a dedicated server would be good?bad?no difference?would anyone like a mint?

 

[Ben]

Sounds good to me.

Wish I had the money to upgrade...

BTW, this might interest you Migrating to Gigabit Ethernet.

Something is strange though because the Gigabit card that comes with the Linksys kit is 32-bit PCI AKAIK. I sent them a letter asking why this is but they haven't responded. I think they figure with only an 8-port switch, the 32-bit PCI bus will have enough bandwidth.

 

[cruelpsycho]

Thanx. But still doesn't answer my question of why make GOC cards and not switches.

 

[RanDum72]

Asante makes a a 4 and 7 port 10/100/1000 switch. Price:$1150 and $1800 respectively.
Xsense also makes a 4 port 10/100/1000 switch for a grand.

 

[cruelpsycho]

Well yeah theres no problem if i want to spend 2-6 grand i would go fiber. but we are talking affordable gig over copper. Maybe firewire? What you guys think? thats easy to setup and 400Mbps. Anyone using firewire for networking? Thanks for all the responses.
I'll start a new thread for that one ok.

 

[ScottMac]

The prices you're seeing for Gig now, are the same as were Fast Ethernet was 5-6 years ago or so. As the technology becomes more common, and the manufacturers get some of the R&D cost back, then the prices come down. Give it some time.

FWIW

Scott

 

[cruelpsycho]

I would but i dont have a few years i have to wait to redo my server. So i need to make up my mind now.

 

[L3Guy]

If you are running between buildings, I strongly recommend fiber.
Lightning can affect something like this very easily.
The university I attended had to go to fiber for 9.6 terminals
just because of all the lightning damage.
If you decide to run Gig over fiber, make sure to pay attention to
distance limitations. I believe its only 260M for 62.5/125 MM on 1000SX.
May not come into play unless your neighbor is a quarter mile down the road,
but it doesn't hurt to check.

HTH

Doug

 

[Ender78]

Any reason why you neeed the 1 Gigabit speeds ? I don't know if you realize how much data that really is? For any home applications, I don't believe that you will be able to stress even 100 Megabit Ether. To stream Mpeg 2 (playing a DVD remotely) all you need is about 70 Mbps.