Gigabit network

[badauss42]

Please reccomend NIC, cabling, and switch to accomodate a minimum of 400mbits bandwidth. Try to stay away from fiber. I want minimum CPU usage. 0% would be ideal. This is for a university research project, so money isnt a huge priority, as long as it works. Using two dell PIII 700 systems. If you think new computers are neccessary, then let me know.
thanks.

 

[CTR]

This is from personal experience, so take it as such:

If you want to see gigabit file transfers, etc., you will need to stay away from Microsoft. Novell and Solaris are the only two NOS's I've ever seen that could utilize 1Gbps.

As for hardware with proven Gigabit performance, I recommend the Cisco GSR 12012 and any gigabit Extreme switch. Why do you want to stay away from fiber?

 

[badauss42]

The reason im trying to stay away from fiber is because we are trying to simulate an option for the evryday user. Fiber is costly. I cant tell you too much, sorry about that. I was told CAT5 cabling can handle gigabit transfer.

We are aware of the inefficient microsoft os in terms of high speed networking.
Please elaborate on the cabling and let me know.
thanks

 

[badauss42]

also, what kind of costs ARE we looking at for the cisco equipmet?

 

[AnimeKnight]

i think the new G4 comes with standard gigabit network

 

[Poontos]

Netgear has gigabit $hit.

 

[Akash]

just get a netgear gigabit over copper switch... its 8 ports but what the hell.... and they also make gigabit over copper nic cards... not the best but cisco doesnt have full 24port gigabit over copper switches yet...at least i dont think

 

[CTR]

Are you looking at doing wire-speed Gigabit switching, or is performance not the top priority?

How many active devices are you talking about? Just the two servers and the switch?

 

[spidey07]

If you are wanting to do Gigibit Ethernet then use fiber. Stay away from copper for gig enet.

As for a NIC I'd agree that NT 4.0 cannot utilize a full GIG nic. Netware and Solaris work great. For the x86 machines go with the Intel GIG nic, Suns 64bit pci Gig NIC is nice as well. IF you can make sure you use a 64 bit/66 mhz PCI bus.

You can't go wrong with a cisco switch. I used to install networks with different company's net products and got burned WAY to much. Now it is either all Lucent, Nortel, or preferably CISCO.

Cisco makes a cheap 8 port gig switch - 3508. Much better to go with chassis such as 4000 or 6000 but that depends on what your trying to do.

 

[namit23]

If you wanna have gigabit connections than CAT5 wont be useful as it only supports speeds upto 100mbps. CAT5e will support 1000mbps. So go for CAT5e if you dont wanna use fiber optic.

 

[badauss42]

The setup is between two servers with a switch in betwen them. However, I believe the PCI bus is 33mhz. What motherboards have 66mhz PCI bus?
Why use fiber? What is wrong with the copper cabling?

 

[spidey07]

OH, I see now. If that is your only application then copper would be OK. Namit does have a point that Gig over copper requires CAT 5E.

You'll see better performance from a 64bitx66 MHZ bus over the 32/33 used in most systems. Newer servers (1 year) often come equipped with the 64 bit bus. Do the math on total bus bandwidth and you'll see 64 bit PCI offers 4 times the bandwidth (about 4 gigabits/sec)

If you want MAXIMUM performance use a server with separate two or four PCI buses. Put one gig card on one bus and another gig card on the other bus and Etherchannel the two together. THAT'S 2 GIG TX AND 2 GIG RX FULL DUPLEX. Hell most hard drives can't keep up with that.

Let me know what your objective is and I can help some more.

spidey,
PS - the only system I've seen that can really push two gig cards is a Sun 10000, and even then it was only 60% per card.

 

[dirtboy]

You can aggregate up to four Intel nic's on one pc to one switch. 4 x 100mbit = 400mbit full duplex. A low end 16 port Intel switch ought to accomodate two machines easily...

 

[badauss42]

The thing I am looking for most right now maximum throughput in one direction only, not bidirectional. The thing i am trying to measue is the cpu load that the networking part of my setup is taking up. Right now, with a 100megabit connextion, the cpu load time 14%. I want this to be as close as possible to 0%, so the cpu can spend its time doing my algorithm on the data in memory. In reality, i just want around 400mega bits, on one connection (not 4), that simulates a mock internet in the future, where gigabit lans will be a norm.

So basically, I need to aquire the following things:

2 NIC's with its own processor, maximum cpu offload capabilities
CAT 5e cabling
Switch
Software on the servers. Im guessing WIN 2K is no good? I would like to stick to it as much as possible, but a viable option to change my software for a new OS.

So please point me in the right direction for more info, and exact componnents for the list above.
thanks again. i appreciate all your help.

 

[Xanathar]

If your scared of using fiber, or switching to an OS with direct access to the Network card, then you may already have reached a failure point. However you WILL need 64bit busses to handle the traffic you want to push. Does it have to be from 1 server to another? maybe if you actually gave some details. Why not use 4 servers, and a load balancer with gigabit, with a direct crossover to another load balancer or setup? Do you have enough memory to handle this, your disk subsystem sure wont handle the load. You say this is one way traffic, so you are using UDP only, or some proprietry protocol?

What are you trying to test? IP load? Application Load? Distributed Computing?

You should really do alot more research into your big picture if you are asking these questions.


Edit: Also realize the internet is not all ethernet... ever thought of ATM, Serial, packet sizes, fragmentation, latency? a big pipe between two computers means nothing if you want to simulate the internet of the future.

 

[badauss42]

ot a matter of being scared xanathar. If you read the posts, this is part of a research project. We have setup certain parameters that our funders whant us to keep. Fiber is most likely not an option, and unneccesary for 400megabits. The parametsr also include just pc to pc communication. So Two servers, with a switch between them. I have already aquired 66mhz bus, at 64bits. So in essence, I am just looking for a two NICS's that will offload the cpu time as much as possible. I have already found a switch that will work perfectly. I have tried INTEL's server gigabit cards, and they performed horribly for cpu usage, almost 18%. So any direction towards other cards that are designed to be cpu independent would be greatly appreciated.

 

[badauss42]

our programs was written for windows. But if i find that its windows problem thats causing so much cpu usage on network actions, and not the NIC or something, then I will switch to solaris or netware.

 

[Xanathar]

If you are maxing 1 gig (18% sure isnt a CPu limitation, might be a bus or memory limitation thou) How much less CPU do you want?

If you go fiber you will have more options for network cards (realize its not the media which is important (both should run at the same speed), but your app and testing methodology. So you will have higher performing cards with Asics. The 3com Gigabit might be a good start as it claims to actually hand some tcp functions instead of passing off the network and session layer to the cpu.) I still want to point out dont forget to play with packet sizes and quality of service.... both of which will be big ticket items

 

[spidey07]

Agree with Xanathar, however if you must go down the dark road of gigabit over copper then check out this article.

www.nwc.com/118/1118f1side3.html

spidey

ps - check out specs on the sysconnect nic at www.sysconnect.com

 

[badauss42]

We are using TCP protocol. IP packets basically. Anyways, if fiber will make that much of a difference, then mabye i will look into it. I am not maxing 1 gig. 320 Megabits to be exact. the cpu usage is the amount of cpu is being used for the network card. I have also been told that the 3com is very good from not using too much CPU usage. I have been playing with packet sizes and memory sizes for awhile, so thats not an issue. Would anyone know where I can find more info about cpu usage specs for the NICS?

 

[badauss42]

Also, thanks for all your guys help as well. I will do more work on this today and get back to you. also let me know if you come up with anything i might useful

 

[Xanathar]

you dont even need a switch really, just your two servers with the gigabit fiber nics, then just swap the send and receive (crossover basically) (since your not account switch lag anyways). Then you can even do a web review of what cards have what cpu useage (There is no current listing simply because it would vary so much between cards, OS, pci bus.mhz, processor, bus speed, memory, and even cache settings in the OS (might want to set yours as large as possible (rwin))

 

[barebottoms]

never mind.