Recently, I've been having some troubles with my network that seem to be stemming from my DI-604 broadband router. Essentially, it seems to be disconnecting from the LAN for some unknown reason. It may actually be rebooting completely, but I can't really verify this, as my connection to the cable modem is obviously non-existent when it happens.
What really confuses me about the situation is that on my main workstation, Windows actually reports the cable as being disconnected momentarily. Sometimes this is just for a fraction of a second, but there have been times that it has displayed the icon for several seconds. I have not had to touch the router or workstations to get things working normally again, just waiting a couple seconds and then re-trying a connection (to AIM, IRC, www, whatever) yields a working connection.
I'm wondering if the DI-604 is having some trouble with the amount of data I'm pushing across it. I've noticed that the problem seems to manifest most frequently after watching about an hour to 90 minutes of video on my HTPC. All my video files are stored on a fileserver, so the data is being transferred across the network while viewing. As annoying as it can be for the thing to disconnect while I'm sitting and chatting on IRC, I'm sure you can imagine how much more frustrating it is when I am in the middle of an episode of Battlestar Galactica and get booted back to the HTPC frontend because the network has up and disappeared. :shocked:
This problem, and my suspicion that the router is the culprit, have prompted me to begin looking into upgrading my network to a GigE level. I copy a lot of large files across the network, and I suspect it may help some sluggishness in certain areas of my HTPC setup.
As such, I have been wondering what the ideal way to do such an upgrade would be. Obviously, I've seen that a number of people have been happy with the D-Link 4100 and 4300 broadband routers. The only thing that concerns me about those solutions is their apparent lack of jumbo frame support. While I guess it wouldn't be the end of the world to not have jumbo frames, if I can get support for them at a reasonable cost, I certainly would like to go that route.
My current network setup is thus:
- D-Link DI-604 router
- Main Workstation (Windows XP)
- HTPC (Windows XP)
- Fileserver (Windows Server 2003)
I don't necessarily need internet availability on most of my network, just my main workstation. As such, I could live without a router and simply connect the cable modem to my main workstation. However, I'm not really fond of this particular concept, and internet access on the other systems without using ICS or some other software would certainly be handy.
This raises a couple questions that, so far, I have been unable to answer.
If I get a gigabit switch that supports jumbo frames, and connect it to a broadband router that does not support jumbo frames (and probably not even GigE), will I be able to use GigE with jumbo frames on the rest of the LAN without issue? Obviously, I don't need GigE speeds or jumbo frames on the connection to the broadband router, since my connection isn't really even capable of saturating a 10Mbps link.
If not, would I just be better off getting a solution like the D-Link 4100 and calling it a day, while sacrificing the (somewhat minor) performance boost from jumbo frames?
I guess at this point, I'm looking for input and suggestions, before I go ahead and lay out some cash on something that I might be unhappy with. Any advice that you guys can provide would be most appreciated!
What really confuses me about the situation is that on my main workstation, Windows actually reports the cable as being disconnected momentarily. Sometimes this is just for a fraction of a second, but there have been times that it has displayed the icon for several seconds. I have not had to touch the router or workstations to get things working normally again, just waiting a couple seconds and then re-trying a connection (to AIM, IRC, www, whatever) yields a working connection.
I'm wondering if the DI-604 is having some trouble with the amount of data I'm pushing across it. I've noticed that the problem seems to manifest most frequently after watching about an hour to 90 minutes of video on my HTPC. All my video files are stored on a fileserver, so the data is being transferred across the network while viewing. As annoying as it can be for the thing to disconnect while I'm sitting and chatting on IRC, I'm sure you can imagine how much more frustrating it is when I am in the middle of an episode of Battlestar Galactica and get booted back to the HTPC frontend because the network has up and disappeared. :shocked:
This problem, and my suspicion that the router is the culprit, have prompted me to begin looking into upgrading my network to a GigE level. I copy a lot of large files across the network, and I suspect it may help some sluggishness in certain areas of my HTPC setup.
As such, I have been wondering what the ideal way to do such an upgrade would be. Obviously, I've seen that a number of people have been happy with the D-Link 4100 and 4300 broadband routers. The only thing that concerns me about those solutions is their apparent lack of jumbo frame support. While I guess it wouldn't be the end of the world to not have jumbo frames, if I can get support for them at a reasonable cost, I certainly would like to go that route.
My current network setup is thus:
- D-Link DI-604 router
- Main Workstation (Windows XP)
- HTPC (Windows XP)
- Fileserver (Windows Server 2003)
I don't necessarily need internet availability on most of my network, just my main workstation. As such, I could live without a router and simply connect the cable modem to my main workstation. However, I'm not really fond of this particular concept, and internet access on the other systems without using ICS or some other software would certainly be handy.
This raises a couple questions that, so far, I have been unable to answer.
If I get a gigabit switch that supports jumbo frames, and connect it to a broadband router that does not support jumbo frames (and probably not even GigE), will I be able to use GigE with jumbo frames on the rest of the LAN without issue? Obviously, I don't need GigE speeds or jumbo frames on the connection to the broadband router, since my connection isn't really even capable of saturating a 10Mbps link.
If not, would I just be better off getting a solution like the D-Link 4100 and calling it a day, while sacrificing the (somewhat minor) performance boost from jumbo frames?
I guess at this point, I'm looking for input and suggestions, before I go ahead and lay out some cash on something that I might be unhappy with. Any advice that you guys can provide would be most appreciated!
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