Two cards faster then one?

[Elias824]

Hey so one of my buddies was telling me he connected his server he uses to stream blue ray to his network with 2 intel cards, that act as one.
Is that really any faster then just having one card for a the network? I would think that it wouldn't make a difference since your still limited by the rest of the network even though that one pc has a faster connection.
Opinions?

 

[drebo]

If you have a switch that can support link aggregation and NICs that can support link aggregation, then you will get approximate speeds of (line speed * number of aggregated links). This will normally not be the case for anyone outside of a business scenario, and won't help him if he's only connecting one computer that doesn't have aggregated links connecting to it.

2x 1Gb connection = ~2Gb potential bandwidth. However, if he's only connecting to it from a single wireless connection (~22Mb) or a 100Mb or even a 1Gb connection, he's not going to see any speed increase. Where it would help is that if you have two 1Gb computers also connecting to it. In that case, both computers would get near-gigabit speeds.

Link aggregation to the server I can't see being very useful in many situations outside of HA.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Elias824
Hey so one of my buddies was telling me he connected his server he uses to stream blue ray to his network with 2 intel cards, that act as one.
Is that really any faster then just having one card for a the network? I would think that it wouldn't make a difference since your still limited by the rest of the network even though that one pc has a faster connection.

Ask him to fully describe and document a scenario where he's got more that 1 Gb/s measured throughput and you can decide further based on the use case, amount of improvement, and additional cost and complexity, etc.

 

[Elias824]

well lets say he has 2-3 computers pulling stuff from that server over his 1Gb/s network. Wouldn't he also be capping out the potential transfer rate of his hdd's? well im actually debating trying this out, ive got 2 intel network cards in my lan server, might be interesting to play around with.

 

[kevnich2]

Honestly, if someone has the money, equipment and time to do something like that, I would advise him to use those skills for more than just streaming blue-ray content across a network. But hey, more power to him....

 

[bobdole369]

1 PC won't be able to saturate a 1gbit link - most can't saturate (I got flamed last time, but everyone shut up once "saturation" was defined) - a single 100mbit port. No point as blu-rays bit rate is 40mbits. Thus even if it were possible to stream blu-ray - you could do 2 or 3 on a single 100mbit NIC.

he uses to stream blue ray to his network


I have a big problem with that statement. Your friend is "transcoding" to something else and then streaming that out. It's not currently possible due to HDCP to use anything other than a display that is HDCP compliant to access blu-ray content.

Your friend is a liar, or you are a troll.

 

[Elias824]

well let me rephrase that, he has a streaming media server of some type, that he can access with any other pc in his house to watch blue ray movies he has ripped to that computer. I dont really know the specifics other then that. He did specifically mention that he set up his network that way so he could have more then one computer access them. Yes I know its all a little over the top, but he is very much a geek on the subject of any kind of HD media.

Edic* Also being able to do 2-3 40mbit blue rays over his network would assume he had at super efficient 100mbit network. 40x3=120? even 40x2=80? it would be at best cutting it close.

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: bobdole369
1 PC won't be able to saturate a 1gbit link - most can't saturate (I got flamed last time, but everyone shut up once "saturation" was defined) - a single 100mbit port. No point as blu-rays bit rate is 40mbits. Thus even if it were possible to stream blu-ray - you could do 2 or 3 on a single 100mbit NIC.

he uses to stream blue ray to his network


I have a big problem with that statement. Your friend is "transcoding" to something else and then streaming that out. It's not currently possible due to HDCP to use anything other than a display that is HDCP compliant to access blu-ray content.

Your friend is a liar, or you are a troll.

I flamed you last time and gave up because you began to argue semantics. I still stand by statement that most desktop computers can easily max out a 100mbps network link while transferring data from computer to computer. Since you keep on comparing the 100mbps to 1gbps you are implying data throughput, not switching planes being saturated.

 

[drebo]

Any computer whose hard drive cannot read 10MB/s (approx. throughput of a 100mbit full duplex link) needs to be thrown out. Modern 7200RPM hard drives, even, are in the 40-60MB/s range, which is easily enough to saturate a 1Gbps ethernet link (baring the usage of high-end equipment and jumbo frames).

While I'm still of the oppinion that most people do not need gigabit, it is easy to see why 100Mbit would be constricting in certain instances.

 

[bobdole369]

I do like to play semantics, but I concede that I am implying data throughput as the measure. Thus perhaps a better term to use would be "100% utilization of bandwidth on a single port". Yes most computers can now fill up available bandwidth at a single port on 100mbit links. They can also approach 100% on 1gbit links.

That doesn't mean saturated - but thats to digress and it doesn't apply here.

SHort answer OP - No - you probably won't see any difference with 2 NICs - and neither is your friend.

 

[Elias824]

well even if there isnt a difference, it is coold for bragging rights I suppose. was wondering about it more as a theoretical stance, or under what circumstances would it be noticeably better. Im assuming it would only kick in if quite a few people were accessing the same server, might be useful for a lan party everyone pulling stuff from one computer.

 

[bobdole369]

under what circumstances would it be noticeably better.


At a call center where I worked - the most overloaded (as far as throughput goes) server was the MS SQL database server - We had a NIC for each "account" with anywhere from 75-400 people on each account. We had 8 100mbit nics. One day a slot on the cisco went bad and 4 of those NIC's went dark. Routing kicked in and nobody lost connectivity, but productivity suffered as folks clicked and waited all day. To log a call would normally take 10-15 seconds to "save", with half the bandwidth available it was more like 45-60 seconds.

 

[shempf]

not sure why you're leaning on it being over the top & what not.
Most people that setup streaming have a house that 'needs' & it's more convenient to have a 'server' or two to provide whole house content.
avsforum can provide a plethora of info on this topic.

 

[drebo]

Originally posted by: bobdole369
I do like to play semantics, but I concede that I am implying data throughput as the measure. Thus perhaps a better term to use would be "100% utilization of bandwidth on a single port". Yes most computers can now fill up available bandwidth at a single port on 100mbit links. They can also approach 100% on 1gbit links.

That doesn't mean saturated - but thats to digress and it doesn't apply here.

SHort answer OP - No - you probably won't see any difference with 2 NICs - and neither is your friend.

You're not playing "semantics," you're being willfully ignorant.

100% utilization on the link IS saturation of that link, regardless of what definition of saturation you want to use.

 

[bobdole369]

I'm dropping this point. Thanks drebo

 

[tranceport]

if there is only one server, one client, and a single stream using one source and destination port, it is not possible with today's link aggregation technology to achieve faster than 1gbps with gigabit nics.

Specifically with Cisco's etherchannel load balancing you can use layer 2 mac addresses, layer 3 ip addresses, or layer 4 ports.