Networks Getting max speed over network.

Currently my network is running at 100Mbps.

The NIC in my main PC and my NAS storage are capable of running at 1000Mbps and I want to get them talking to each other at the faster speed.

Can I link them with a 1000Mbps switch and join it to the network or will this bring the speed of the switch back down to 100Mbps?

Any help apreciated

 

This will work fine mate, the speed between your PC and the NAS will be 1000mbit but everything else thats connected at 100mbit will be at the slower speed. The switch will have the capability to run some ports at 1000 but yet have some at running at 100.

 

Yep, a gigabit switch should let you do that. If it were a hub I don't think that would be true, but hubs are just silly. I'm fairly sure you could have two devices talking at 10Mbit and two at Gigabit on the same gigabit switch.

 

And not only that, if you had a 100Mbit device talking to a Gb device, the switch would communicate with the Gb at Gb speeds and with the 100Mbit at 100Mbit speeds, which is useful if you have multiple sessions with a single Gbit server - the server can, at least in theory, drive 10 x 100Mbit sessions at the same time at full speed.

 

unless you get a particularly high-end and expensive gigabit switch, you wont get anywhere near 1gb speeds, due to the fact that home ones generally dont have jumbo frame support

The fastest way would be to simply connect one card to the other, straight through, with a crossover (although it would probably do it with a normal cable as well) cat5e or cat6, then set your NICs to the highest common MTU possible

provided that neither of them are on the PCI bus, theres no reason that you wont get full gigabit

 

Surely you *need* a crossover for a direct NIC-NIC connection?

 

Yeah, I know. That's why I said 'in theory'. But you will still get decent performance out of a Gbit switch - certainly well beyond 100Mbit speed.

 

not to mention the disks at either end probably cant sustain much more than 60MB/s (480mbps)

 

im not using a crossover for the connection from my server to main pc, works a treat

i forget these things with 15k at one end and raid5 at the other

 

Cheers guys

I'll order myself a gigabit switch, any recomendations?

 

TrendNET i love their switchs

 

Netgear are giving away free iPod shuffles with some of their gigabit switches should you be that way inclined. I'm trying to convince my boss we need an upgrade!