Gigabit switches?

[Thor86]

?

-Edit-

Just ordered the SMC 5 port. :beer:

 

[fs5]

I'd say the cheapest one you can find. A switch is usually a switch, the performance between A and B are negliable for home environments.

 

[gaidin123]

The SMC gigabit 5 and 8 port models are what you want. They are the cheapest switches to support jumbo frames and, as long as your ethernet cards support jumbo frames, large files should transfer faster, and with less cpu utilization than through a switch that does not support jumbo frames.

I have a Linksys 8 port gig switch and it works fine but doesn't support jumbo frames.

Gaidin

 

[spidey07]

ditto on making sure it has jumbo frame support.

 

[fs5]

Jumbo Frame Support doesn't appear in many switches below $100 (at least not that I know off).

Meanwhile you can get a netgear for ~$45 (apparently ~$30 at fry's b&m)
http://shop3.outpost.com/product/3805567

 

[JackMDS]

SMC makes the least expensive, decent Giga Switch, with Jumbo Frames.

:sun:

 

[MulLa]

Will the network automatically make usre of jumbo frames when it's supported by the NIC and switch? Or is it something that must be turned on?

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: MulLa
Will the network automatically make usre of jumbo frames when it's supported by the NIC and switch? Or is it something that must be turned on?

I believe it depends on the NIC, and it must also be configured on the switch (depending on switch)

 

[JackMDS]

MTU in the TCP/IP Stack has to be set to 9000.

:sun:

 

[Shogun]

A link to a listing of jumbo frame clean networking gear I stumbled across...

 

[Concillian]

For most home networking jumbo frame support is not very important. The limitation will be the hard drive(s) long before the gigabit.

I see up to 35 MB/sec with my IDE drive and around 42 MB/sec with my 15k SCSI drive (through FTP, through a windows drag and drop both are about 10 MB/sec slower). I have an SMC switch and a cheapo Trendware. Makes no difference if I use the Trendware with regular MTUs or the SMC with jumbo frames... IF you are sure to not set a limit on the interrupts per second in your driver options. Most drivers install with a limit on interrupts per second. At standard MTU size this essentially caps your bandwidth to: (interrupts per second * MTU size) bytes per second.

If you don't have RAID setups on both ends to give the required sustained throughput to max out gigabit, I wouldn't be too concerned about your switch. I'd ensure I had a decent cards or on-board PHYs (i.e. NOT REALTEK) before worrying much about the switch.

 

[Thor86]

Thanks for all the info everyone! :beer:

 

[trikster2]

I have the SMC, I see it for around $60 these days.

It's a nice switch, but some people over at ars say they have a problem with noise from the switch. Mine is pretty silent.

I made a big deal about making sure my switch has jumbo frames but never got around to implementing it on my linux server. I need to too. So far my performance reported in the ctrl-alt-delete lan meter is saying I'm not getting much more than 100mb/s out of the thing. This is from striped raid 1 drives.

Concillian: Any idea on where to set unlimited interupts per second on intel drivers? I don't see that option anywhere..............

 

[Thor86]

Just setup my SMC 5port switch and even without using JumboFrames support on my nics, I can transfer 5gigs of data in about 5 mins. Woot!

 

[HKSturboKID]

Originally posted by: Thor86
Just setup my SMC 5port switch and even without using JumboFrames support on my nics, I can transfer 5gigs of data in about 5 mins. Woot!

Very impressive.

On a side note, why would people want to setup gigabit on a soho network. I would think if anything gigibit will be for WAN connections and 100mbps would be sufficent for LAN. then again, if you have the budget for it, y Not.

 

[KidViciou$]

thanks for the info on jumbo frames!!!

 

[homestarmy]

Maybe a dumb question, but can you just use a crossover cable with about the same results as the switch?

 

[skriefal]

Sure... as long as you only need to connect two devices.

 

[JesseKnows]

Maybe a dumb question, but can you just use a crossover cable with about the same results as the switch?

All Gigabit NICs I have seen are autonegotiating so you don't need a crossover cable, any cable will do.