Afternoon. Very briefly - I need to increase my network throughput. I have gigabit ethernet to all the devices that matter. Plans are under consideration to expand the quantity of said ethernet devices by factor two. Problem is though the network, when in use, is already at capacity - I'm already being limited by gigabit network speeds between devices. Given that one of the new devices I'm planning to introduce to my home is going to be a full-time content server, I'm concerned that I will always be bottlenecked by 120MBps-ish transfer speeds. So my mind jumped to the next step. Which I believed would be gigabit duplexing? My thoughts on this, while initially favourable, were that I didn't really want the additional dual-cabling required, and nor did many devices actually fully support this, as well as the fact it could be awkward to administrate and troubleshoot if there were any issues later on. So, looking at 10Gbe then - The costs of NICs alone were prohibitive, and all seemed to be aimed at the corporate server market? even that considered, I couldn't find any 10Gbe routers on the usual scan/ebuyer etc. Where am I supposed to get one from? Surely this must be a common problem? Is there any middle road? or something I've overlooked perhaps? Cheers, TSB
What kind of content are you serving? I can understand you maxing out the network if your doing backups or large file swaps but surely your not saturating your bandwidth all the time? A gigabit network should be able to stream multiple HD video streams simultaneously.
what problems are you facing by the apparent 1Gb limit? how many devices do you have on your network and what are they doing, is this a corporate thing or home network
Seconding and thirding the above comments. Gigabit ethernet should be enough for all but the most data-intensive of tasks - so unless your performing constant backups between multiple computers, you shouldn't be running out of headroom. What devices are you using to connect everything together? Perhaps a managed switch and the clever use of subnetting will help with your perceived problems?
If you absoutely need to, go with a pair (or more) of GigE teamd connections to your server, and then just a single link everywhere else. You'll need an NIC that supports teaming, and probably a managed switch (You might be able to get away with just a webview switch)
Thanks for all the help guys. Didn't mean to desert/abandon the thread like I did. Came down with sudden January man-flu aka 'the lurgies', and didn't even have the strength to haul myself to my computer. Now that I'm feeling a little improved, reading back, I felt a bit foolish - really, I'm just being impatient. Also, the way I've written the OP, I realise it sounds a bit like the whole network is cracking under constant strain! This isn't the case. You see, I recently backed-up my Blu-ray collection. I now need to make some serious network device/storage changes, so copying, moving, and sharing these 50Gb iso files has temporarily transformed my sleepy, side-road of a network into a transcontinental highway. As I am currently installing larger drives into my network storage, I'm having to shuttle round several full HDDs worth of data from one place to another while I move from varying disks (old 500gb to 2Tb disks) to new 3Tb drives instead. So it's a somewhat temporary annoyance, but one that I know will re-occur when I upgrade from somewhat adhoc, flimsy and inflexible Winboxes and NAS-box storage to a proper custom Windows Home server type deal with proper Windows clients later this year. So it's just a temporary blip in usage that I wished I could speed up somehow - thinking jumbo frames, or something along those lines - to ease my 8Tb transfer burden. First world problems. To answer your questions though It's all home usage, and the content currently being handled covers everything from tiny notepad files through to full HDD images (my lame onsite-backups) so when I do want some of the larger items it can take well over two hours to get a local copy. There at least 20 devices on the network, but most are irrelevant for this discussion. Key gigabit, high-use, SSD equipped devices are a 'main server' which is in need of replacement, three winboxes, and three high-priority PCs - each with their own raft of random bits and bobs, and each with their own weird permissions. Headroom is only ever an issue once I start doing file movements, and even then it is only between the two devices involved, the router/switch and other devices are unaffected. This is all over Cat6... I think I might chalk my 'problem' up to working horrible hours at the moment, and just not having the time to sit and get this over and done with. Suggestions still appreciated of course! TSB
A a cheap and dirty solution would be to buy a two gigabit NICs and make/buy a long crossover cable. Slap them in two machines at a time, assign them 192.168.200.x address' and do all your major transfers over that connection whilst still being able to transfer stuff over your regular lan to other machines. After all the major transfers between those boxes are done, move the nics to the next boxs.
Without spending silly money there is not much you can do. A quick and cheap solution for your file transfers could be an external eSATA HDD dock? If your target device has a eSATA connection it will be the quickest way of doing it.
