Lan party network speeds with hubs...

[Viperoni]

I was thinking of getting a trio of 12 port D-Link 10bt, half fuplex, hubs.
Hooking them up with the cascading (rj-45) ports, and using them all at the next lan party.

My only question is how slow will it be?
Assuming 25 ppl are gaming and the other 11 are doing something else *cough* ....
what kinda pings can I expect to see?

obviously I don't have too much experience with this kinda stuff..
help me out plz!

 

[loogie]

I dunno. Try posting in the networking forum. I think a switch would give you the best performance though, especially between that many people.

 

[Viperoni]

Definetely, but I don't have too much $$$ for a switch.
How bad would it be with the three hubs?
under 30 pings?

I haven't gotten any replies in the networkign forums yet, after like 2 hours, I figured there's more ppls here anyways

 

[Killbat]

You have to also consider what's acceptable. I believe that under 50 is prime. Who knows how much the cascading will hurt your latency, but it shouldn't be too bad.

 

[Mday]

heh... it should not be too bad... did you forget the cost of the cables?

 

[Viperoni]

Hmm.....
I consider 30 about the max (for a lan connection)
Cable (rogers at home) in Canada never goes below 55-60 anyways

Would it be better to just get a huge 48 port HP hub?
same specs

I figured that cascading 3 hubs would be faster than 1 big one...guess not

 

[Viperoni]

BYOC = Bring yoru own cable's


I'd obviously have to buy the cascading cat5 cable's (3 of them )

 

[Viperoni]

Damm there's a lotta ppl in OT

 

[Fathom4]

By the time you figure in the cost for the cascade cables you might price out swithces. You'll certainly get better performance.

 

[Mandrill]

one big hub would be better than cascaded hubs. All the data that is being broadcasted will have to be pumped down one 10bt port to get to the next hub. Now if you get alot of people pulling files back and forth, that one port is going to get clogged pretty quick even though it is 10mbt. You should get decent ping times with everyone playing but not with playing and pulling. It'll choke.

 

[Sephiroth_IX]

Get a switch, you wont regret it.

We went from 40 pings on a 100mb hub to 12-15 on a 10/100 switch.

I'd say around 50 would be where you will land with the cascades, probably 35 with the larger 24 port, and a good 15-20 with a switch.

 

[jmcoreymv]

Heres an Idea, if you cant afford all switches or a big switch, why not buy the hubs and connect them to a 4 port switch, this way it will eliminate much of the uneeded bandwidth problems.

 

[Impact55]

Why not charge them like 5-10 bucks each and youll plenty for a switch

 

[Viperoni]

I'm looking to charge everybody $10-12 each....but the place im renting will be at least $100....
so I need at least 10 ppl to cover the rental, plus I gotta have some left over to cover the hubs/switches.

I'll find a good deal on a good switch someday

 

[bigjon]

Linksys has an 8-port 10/100 switch for about $75 shipped (Onvia). You could always cascade hubs from that switch (that would still be better than all hubs).

Cable is fairly cheap - order a $15 crimper from Onvia and 100 rj45 connectors from PCCables.com for $7+s/h. It's really easy to make your own and you'll save a buttload.

 

[Viperoni]

Everybody brings their own cable, but I have a feeling that nobody has anything longer than the rogers @ home standard length of 6 feet
15 comps within 6 foot diamter = unforseeable

I'm looking at getting a 24port 3com 10bt switch right now, and it has 1 100mbps port (for the server )
I might cascade another 24 port hub off that...dunno yet

 

[bigvince]

one big hub is deffantly better than (myspelling! lol!) 3 small ones mainly because of the number of hops (3 DUH!) plus you want to make sure you get an auto sensing 10/100 just to make sure people with 100 mbit ethernet can take advantage and regular 10 mbit user don't slow every body else down.

 

[Viperoni]

Right now it looks like I'll be getting the 24 port 3com switch (24-10mb, 1-100mb (server port ))

Should be reasonable pings.
Plus I always have the option of getting the trio of Dlink's and using them as secondaries

 

[Czar]

The realy bad thing about hubs are CRC errors, or packet losses.

For those who are playing games wont noticed it except a little extra lag but those who are trying to copy mp3 files and wrz and prn will not like it because alot of the files will have errors in them.

 

[Viperoni]

okay, switch it is