Getting ready to upgrade my router

Supermercado

Diamond Member
Jan 18, 2002
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So right now, I have an old 802.11b Linksys router that I got for like $5 after rebate last year. It's never been really superb but it has WPA which is why I started using it over my old Netgear. I've recently converted one of my old machines into a fileserver and stream media to my (currently) 802.11b laptop. It works well most of the time, slowing down every now and then, maybe because of the network, I don't know. At any rate, I'm looking to upgrade to an 802.11g router and I've been eyeballing the DGL-4300 because it's 11g, has WPA, a gigabit switch, and the packet prioritization stuff so gaming doesn't get interrupted by torrents and such. Newegg has the DGL-4300 for about $95 after rebate right now, unless there's a better model I should look at?

If I do end up with gigabit ethernet, I should probably look into replacing the old NIC in my server with a gigabit-capable one since my desktop/gaming machine does have gigabit onboard and I transfer stuff between the two. 100Mbps seems to be fast enough but a reasonably-priced gigabit NIC can't be more than about $20, can it?

This is a really ignorant question but do I need cat6 cable for gigabit? Or cat5e?

The main question out of all that is the router, I think. Is the DGL-4300 what I want or is there a better one?

Thanks so much for any replies.
 

chuck2002

Senior member
Feb 18, 2002
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cat5e can do gigabit and you will prolly never see issues.
We have gigabit network at work and we use cat5 and cat5e cables and have seen some random issues, espeshilly when accessing networked foxpro databases stored on a server. There will be correctable network communication errors that go on behind the scenes that you will probably never notice. Foxpro was really sensitive to these errors and blew up on us. We are slowly replacing cat5 cables with cat6 as we replace computers or suspect anything strange, but it is not a high priority project.
It is best to get cat6, but you can get away with cat5e and will probably never know the difference.
 

Supermercado

Diamond Member
Jan 18, 2002
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Yeah, for my network at home, it's pretty basic. Mostly just sharing files between my computers.

I guess the DGL-4300 is probably the router to get. I don't see any reason not to go with it to replace my existing Linksys. I'd rather not get something that requires changing to DD-WRT and the DGL-4300 by all accounts seems to be a fantastic router.
 

Madwand1

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Jan 23, 2006
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Originally posted by: SuperCommando
a reasonably-priced gigabit NIC can't be more than about $20, can it?

Yes it can! PCIe NICs tend to perform better than PCI ones, and by large, these have yet to come down to dirt-cheap (perhaps because if you have an available PCIe slot, odds are that you already have a decent PCIe/native GbE, so the demand isn't great for these products).

However, PCI NICs can be just fine for typical GbE transfers, which are more limited by HD speed than anything else. It's only when you get into really high-end drive and file systems and well-tuned software that you start to reach the upper limits of GbE performance, and here, PCI vs. PCIe, etc., can make a difference.

There are limited number of underlying chipsets for available NICs. Intel would be in the higher end, and you should be able to get a Pro 1000 MT or GT for around $25 (perhaps less if you get lucky, eBay etc.). These have good driver support and potential performance. Marvell-based PCI NICs are nice for price, CPU overhead and features, but a little low on performance in comparison (which typically does not matter though because of drive performance limits). Realtek-based PCI NICs are nice for throughput, but demand high CPU utilization, i.e. faster CPUs and higher overall system load to reach higher performance. These can be really cheap. VIA-based NICs are often the cheapest, but I've never tried one. You can usually tell by the driver download or the pictures -- a big "M" on the chip is a Marvell of course; see the Realtek logo online. Most on the 'egg seem to be Realtek-based.

Marvell-based PCIe NICs have good driver support, features, and tend to perform very well.

Broadcom-based PCIe NICs tend to perform well, but don't support jumbo frames.

(Jumbo frames are usually more trouble than they're worth, and the DGL-4300 doesn't support them anyways, but they can give some performance improvement to slow systems/PCI-based NICs.)

Again, the choice of GbE NIC typically makes very little difference for lower-end single-drive-limited transfers.