Upgrade Company to Gigabit?

[michaywood]

Hey,

I work for a company of about 80 people. We work with big files and these Knology internet speeds are getting annoying. I was curious, how much would it cost to upgrade our network to a gigabit network? We are currently setting up our new Thecus NAS, so having a gigabit network would be very nice!

Any ideas?

 

[Chapbass]

This should really be moved to the Networking subforum as opposed to General Hardware, where one of those guys like JackMDS can direct you on how to be awesome.

EDIT: Welcome to the AT Forums! nice first post. Hopefully a mod will move your thread over for ya. I'm sure you'll find that the people here are quite knowledgeable.

 

[RebateMonger]

What kind of cabling do you have now? (Cat 5, 5e, 6 ?)
What switches do you have now?
Do all your PCs have gigabit NICs?
Do you have servers and are these gigabit?
How big is a "big file"?
What type of Internet connection do you have and what kind of modem/router do you have?

 

[imagoon]

Gigabit won't help you with internet... unless you have larger than 100mbps internet connection. As for 'large files' that would depend on what you define as 'large files.'

Anyway what RebateMonger mentioned applies.

 

[Emulex]

to backup our machines (half as that) every night we peg out two gigabit ports to our nas . full dumps every night - no point in dealing with delta files when you have the bandwidth.

your firewall may slow things down if its low-end - to the internet - just remember that the goal will be gigabit everywhere - having a nas trying to shove gigabit down to a 10/100 pc will cause some weird crap to happen (nagle) in one direction.

 

[michaywood]

What kind of cabling do you have now? (Cat 5, 5e, 6 ?) I think we have 5e run in the walls, so that would need to change
What switches do you have now? I don't know, but I would imagine it isn't a gigabit switch..
Do all your PCs have gigabit NICs? Yes.
Do you have servers and are these gigabit? We just bought a Thecus 7-bay NAS and it will arrive next week. Thats all I really know about it. One of our IT guys chose it cause it was affordable
How big is a "big file"? The graphics dept is constantly working with files over 1GB. So I feel if we put all our files on the new NAS, that it would take a little while to even download the file just to work on it..
What type of Internet connection do you have and what kind of modem/router do you have? We have Knology cable internet and our wireless is just a linksys router (again.. we are a small company. lol)

I'm really just curious as to how extreme the costs would be, if they would be extreme. And don't know if i should have the graphics dept get it's own NAS that they can direct wire to their computers instead (since there isn't a way to really share a harddrive except over a network).

Thanks guys!

 

[ecom]

Cat5e is fine for GbE. In fact, the minimum is Cat5 so you do not need new wire.

Are you transferring these 1GB files over the Internet or just within your own enterprise LAN? I'm a bit lost on how your Knology Internet speeds tie into this.

 

[JackMDS]

The type of interaction that is going here "Cries" for a consultant.

It is a big mistake to design a professional Network over the Internet on a user forum.

At home the user might lose his questionable p2p download.

Glitches at work can cause serious damage and be very costly.

 

[Emulex]

sounds good 1810-24 or 2510G-48 are nice solid routers with great warranties (next day air advance swap). might as well. price is cheap. the thecus is probably not going to perform anywhere near what you think but its better to be all one platform (gigabit) than to have the poor thecus trying to dish out gigabit downstream to 100meg systems.

 

[her209]

Define "big files".

EDIT: Never mind, I saw you answered it in the post above. If you're constantly dealing with 1+GB files, you'll definitely see a benefit.

 

[michaywood]

Cat5e is fine for GbE. In fact, the minimum is Cat5 so you do not need new wire.

Are you transferring these 1GB files over the Internet or just within your own enterprise LAN? I'm a bit lost on how your Knology Internet speeds tie into this.

Good point. Knology wouldn't have a thing to do with it since this is merely for internal use. Our cable speeds wouldn't increase, just our internal speeds between our NAS and our computers.

All in all, I'm just curious of a ballpark price for an upgrade like this. If it's merely $1,000, then I will propose the change to our company. If it's $100,000, then we probably won't even consider it. I was just wanting some ballpark figures that I could take into a company meeting and submit to our boss in hopes to upgrade our company to Gigabit.

Thanks for all the responses!

 

[imagoon]

Good point. Knology wouldn't have a thing to do with it since this is merely for internal use. Our cable speeds wouldn't increase, just our internal speeds between our NAS and our computers.

All in all, I'm just curious of a ballpark price for an upgrade like this. If it's merely $1,000, then I will propose the change to our company. If it's $100,000, then we probably won't even consider it. I was just wanting some ballpark figures that I could take into a company meeting and submit to our boss in hopes to upgrade our company to Gigabit.

Thanks for all the responses!

Depends on how in depth you want to get. I am personally partial to Cisco (opinion). For example you could pick up a couple of 2960G-48 for under 5k and have a solid base to work with. Toss in some 3750G units if you need a solid layer 3 routing switch but they are a bit more expensive. The units I have running now are approaching 2 years of up time (from the uptime in show version.) I have less experience with the bigger HP switches. I would stay away from Dell and Extreme. Dells are great dumb switches, not so hot on the 'features.' My sister company had Extremes that loved to just shutdown at random. They recently changed buildings and he has a picture of himself chucking one in a dumpster.

 

[Tsaico]

The type of interaction that is going here "Cries" for a consultant.

It is a big mistake to design a professional Network over the Internet on a user forum.

At home the user might lose his questionable p2p download.

Glitches at work can cause serious damage and be very costly.

I see a lot of these as clients down the road... this works great for business.

But as for costs, something like this is often in the $4k mark, for a faster switches, a middle end router for internal traffic, and a few of GBe modules for the runs in between MDF and IDF closests. You can also help overall performance if you do some minor VLANs to segregate your traffic. You might save some money upfront if you are doing the work internally, but for overall cost effectivness, if you guys do not have the internal tech to deal with this, just outsource it.

 

[JackMDS]

I see a lot of these as clients down the road... this works great for business.

Even if we forget about the IT aspect.

One bad "Glitch" in the system can wipe info, and or stagnate the business regular operation.

I saw businesses losing income that is far above the saving on the initial IT cost. In many case it was a result of a well intended person who did know how much he does not know.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Even if we forget about the IT aspect.

One bad "Glitch" in the system can wipe info, and or stagnate the business regular operation.

I saw businesses losing income that is far above the saving on the initial IT cost. In many case it was a result of a well intended person who did know how much he does not know.

That's what backup and disaster recovery plans are for.

I can't see how upgrading a network speed could cause data loss though. Faster spreading of viruses? Even at 10mbps (let alone 100) a virus can spread fast enough to wipe all the data too, if that's what the virus is made to do.

I can't see why it would hurt to upgrade to gbps, but first decide if it's really worth the cost. It's easy to go buy a gigabit switch at home, install it, and not look back but in the business world it's hard enough to convince your boss to buy a new pen, let alone a piece of equipment that might not be a requirement (want, vs need). But if they are willing to approve it, then I'd say go ahead. Just do enough research to make sure you get the proper equipment. I heard dell makes great switches, and they're fairly cheap, so it may be worth looking at, but research it first.

 

[JackMDS]

I can't see how upgrading a network speed could cause data loss though. Faster spreading of viruses? Even at 10mbps (let alone 100) a virus can spread fast enough to wipe all the data too, if that's what the virus is made to do.

One of the secrets of online helping is not to act mailnt out of what the helper knows and can do, but also to sense what the OP knows and can do.

Some of you guys often tend forget it.