Would gigabit ethernet help my home network?

[psteng19]

I have a file server setup at home (to share documents, movies, music, video clips, etc.) and up to 6 machines connect to it simultaneously making use of those files (copying, streaming, read/write to files, etc.).
Sometimes I'll have external connections coming in as well (cable - 3 Mbps down, 256 Kbps up) but those connections take little to no bandwidth. It's not FTP or anything.
Specs of my server

The entire network runs at 100 Mbps off 10/100 NIC's.
Being that 6+ machines are using files concurrently, could it max out the 100 Mbps connection coming out of the server?
If so, would putting in a GB NIC help things out, even though the clients are only running at 100 Mbps?

I understand the hard drive would probably not be able to keep up, so I'm looking for real world results and not theoretical results.

 

[jtusa]

No.

 

[SaintTigurius]

no,

only if all ur clients get GB cards than it will

 

[SpunkyJones]

Originally posted by: jtusa4
No.

 

[spidey07]

if you're clients are maxing out the 100 meg connection on the server then gig could help very much.

 

[Devistater]

Maybe.

If you got a 10/100 switch with a gigabit uplink port and then plugged that port into your computer and put a gigabit network card into that computer. Then that MIGHT help (if the bottleneck was network transfers from the one file server computer. If the bottleneck is something else like hardware speeds for example hard drive, this wont do a thing). Assuming that all this file transfers are going to/from the single computer out to the others. (Alternativly if you just got a cheap 5 or 8 port gigabit switch and made sure the server had gigabit network card that should accomplish the same thing).

In any case, you SHOULD have a switch (not a crappy hub) in place already. Do you?

Crapusa had a sale on some gigabit stuff a little while back. I got a 5 port switch for $40 AR and the cards for about $20AR each, and upgraded 2 of my main computers to gigabit. My max transfer rate is just over 100 MB (the theoretical max of 10/100 equipment) when I copy files from one to the other so really its not that much differant. Of course I dont have the latest greatest hardware.