mutant_matt

OK, I am planning on expanding my LAN at home and am having trouble finding out what I need to know. Can anyone help?

1. I have a 10/100 Broadband Router/switch with 3 machines hanging off it. I plan to get Gigabit Ethernet cards for them and a Gigabit switch to hang them off instead with just one 100Mbit connection from the Gigabit switch to the 100Mbit BBRouter/switch (after all, this will only be used for Internet traffic at 512KB). All this lot are upstairs (in the computer room)

2. I then plan to run a (Cat 5e/6) cable to another part of the house (downstairs) where there will be another Gigabit switch with a bunch of 10/100 devices plugged into it (and in the future, this part of the network will be quite busy)

Firstly, I can't see any reason why this won't work and if nothing else, the switches should keep the number of collisions at a minimum? Secondly, I plan it this way so that the link between the two parts of the network should be fast and able to handle any load I am likely to place on it (i.e. possibly a few high use 100Mbit connections concurrently).

The other questions I have are about the Gigabit standard/specification. It would seem that I need Cat 5e cabling, wall boxes, a/some Gigbit switch(s)/hub(s) and NICs. What about Cat 6? Is it needed and or is it worth going for this over Cat 5e? (it is a lot harder to get and is more expensive). It would seem that the cabling needs to be wired up in a particular way to make it all work also? Also, what about Full Duplex/Half Duplex. What do I need to do to get the best performance from everything?

So, anyone got any thoughts, suggestions, ideas, advice etc.?

Thanks,

Matt

dsmith

Just one Q - if you're not even sure about basic LAN topology and Half/Full Duplex - why on earth would you bother with Gigabit ?

Deano

mutant_matt

That's the trouble Deano, I know some about it but have holes in my knowledge. I just want to make sure I get the right bits of kit to enable the highest possible bandwidth (and to future proof it for as long as possible (into a much larger network in the future in a much larger house (hopefully ))).

Gonna help me?

Ta,

Matt

dsmith

Cat 5 will be fine. Take lots of care making your connections. Unwind the absolute minimum of each twisted pair. Borrow a cable tester afterwards to verify them all fully - as simple continuity tester should be an absolute minimum.

Half Duplex (HDX) vs Full Duplex (FDX)

- For 1000BaseT only FDX is supported - in fact it uses all 4 pairs of the Cat5 cable.
- For 10/100 in a fully switched environment everything should be FDX so collisions wont be an issue. HDX is only really relevant these days to older kit and Hubs (Shared segments).

For an easy life dont skimp on NICs and Switches, to get a genuine siginificant improvement on 100 FDX dont buy the cheapest 10/100/1000 on offer, as with all things they're cheap for a reason....

Deano

p.s. so what is the app that needs this raw bandwith ?

Pavlo

Home Theatre PC and video server.

All you need to know at AVS Forums

100mbit gives about 4-5mbyte/sec with decent cards and FDX, I think Gbit lan is good for about 22mbyte/sec with the very fastest machines on the NIC.

Video streaming doesn't need Gbit lan, you can also set up dedicated subnets with just one server and client on to send data more reliably.

Paul

mutant_matt

Thanks Deano, I knew you had it in you

By Cat 5 I presume you mean Cat 5e? I thought the main difference between 100 and 1000 was the spec of the cable and that all 4 pairs are wired for 1000. I was just checking the Full/Half duplex thing as I was confused by some specs of a switch I was looking at.

I only really want this for the link between the two parts of the network as I will potentially have in the not too distant future, MPEG2 streams, concurrent with some network apps, possibly other video streaming (local to the LAN) and some Internet traffic. Further down the line, some possible other voice/data/video distribution stuff plus the usual network traffic stuff. Like I said, just doing my best to not to need to replace it in the future (unless something breaks).

Any recommendations on GBit switches?

Ta,

Matt

mutant_matt

Paul,

Who is Ian?

Matt

P.S. Cheers for the link

carl

Surely if it's a switched 100 Mbit/s (full duplex) network you should be getting around 12 Mbyte/s?

dsmith

The most I have seen consistently through a 100Mbit FDX connection was just over 95 Mbits/sec. Lets allow 15% for protocol O/H so thats 10 MBytes/Sec real data.

I know of one bloke who runs about 5 simultaneous clients reading DVD ISO images mounted as virtual drives on his server - and the server copes quite happily on 100 Mb/s

Gig switches ? Personal practical experience of any worth extends only as far as Cisco kit (Cat 65K etc). I have heard plenty of evidence from people who've spent the time testing to suggest that many of the low-end kit doesn't actually deliver what it claims.

But on the other hand my £25 8 port 10/100 Dabs special has consistently amazed me with its ability to do the basics better than a Cisco 2900 I "borrowed" for a while.

Deano

carl

15% This isn't ATM you know

I had a Cat 5509 in my house at one point, but it was a bit noisy to use as a LAN switch

[Edited by carl - 12/22/2003 10:03:35 PM]

dsmith

Carl - Seeing as we havent fully defined the protocols in use or average packet size () I went for a very conservative worst case (knowing someone would of course pick me up on it.) and still couldnt get close to "4/5 MBytes"

Even a 2924 was too noisy in the loft. Sounded like a space shuttle taking off in the middle of the night. I shudder to think what a 5509 would be like (even if I could get the damn thing through the hatch ). I used a 3Com for a while with some of the fans unplugged. In the end I had to give up Traffic graphs of each PC and SNMP traps for a nice quiet cheapo switch without fans (mind you I havent had to upgrade the s/w yet either to cure this months features )

Deano

[Edited by dsmith - 12/22/2003 11:14:55 PM]

nom

Given the cost at the moment of gigabit switches, I'd have thought the thing to do would be to get good cabling (5e would do IMHO) in & use 100Mb switches for now, seeming they cost next to nothing by comparison & see how that goes. If machines need new NICs get Gb ones as they're cheap, but leave the switches for now.
But I don't know what your budget is Last Gb switch I bought was £1,200 which would be a tad expensive for home use IMO That was 24 port, though, which is rather more than you need

[Edited by nom - 12/22/2003 11:37:34 PM]

carl

I know what you mean.
1) It's big
2) The weight distribution is crap (the handles are at the bottom and it's top heavy)
3) It's heavy

Re (2): when I was returning it to its rightful owner (and I had the Scoob) I encountered a colleague with an E30 M3. Upon exiting the A14/A12 roundabout it rolled across the back seat, and I had to opposite lock when it hit the driver's side rear door

[Edited by carl - 12/22/2003 11:37:04 PM]

dsmith

PMSL Can hear the tac case now - No I've no idea why it wont boot anymore

dowser

If you're going to be running these apps on Wintel, stick with 100Mbps stuff until you've proved that MS products can get anywhere near that limitation Choose switches with a single GB uplink port, and use that for your backbone between floors - this is the only area likely to be overloaded.

Richard

mutant_matt

...and that's why I was going sideways on the roundabout m'lud.....

Thanks guys.

Matt

pat

Although not an issue for home use, VoD over Ethernet is only really sensible when either a) the stream bandwidth is massively less than the connection bandwidth or b) there is some sort of QoS on the link (IPv6, for example). For low quality streams like DVD it shouldn't really be an issue with 100BaseT, but for higher resolution streams it would almost be sensible to have a direct connection to the server for each client, thereby guaranteeing the connection bandwidth AND latency (there may still be issues with the server, of course). The likelihood of encountering high quality streams in consumerland is pretty low, and there ain't many display devices that would do them justice (look at IBM T221, Iiyama 5611 et al, coupled with Matrox Parhelia HR256 for example), so for my money I'de get a few decent 100BaseT cards, a 100BaseT *switch*, some Cat 5e cable and enjoy....

Cheers,

Pat.

Monkeh

Hehe I have a 2924 in my loft, but i removed the 3 fans and have a 80mm fan on the top of it, so it's nice and quiet

I'm looking to get a netgear 4 port gigabit switch for £75 and a intel gigabit card £35 so i shal soon see if it can do what they claim.

At the minuite i get about 8mb/sec on my 100mb LAN.