Gigabit switch or Gigabit router?

[jtktam]

CAT6 cabling is a must for good speeds

-joe

[lcdguy]

Originally Posted by MARSTG

Hello folks
I am running into some issues when trying to upgrade my wired network to gigabit speeds. Seems I have chosen a shitty gigabit wired switch (Asus GXD1008). My both NICs are gigabit capable (2P folder has a pair of NICs from the nVidia chipset while the other system has an Intel Pro 1000/T), right now they are working fine transferring at 100Mbps but I want to upgrade that to 1000Mbps. The reason is the drives with the data are on my other system, which is used by the lady, and 100Mbps is very slow when I want to transfer something big (read HD movies, for example Avatar is like 12 GB) from those drives on my drive to watch something. So my question is : should I go buy a gigabit wired switch or get a gigabit router? As far as gigabit router I was thinking at TPLINK 1043, this one offers gigabit wired connectivity and has a decent price. I won't go more than 100$. I am not expecting 125MB/s but I would like if it would be at least 50-60MB/s.

Get a switch. As getting a gigabit router is not going boost internet performance. (unless your rocking a 100mbps+ internet pipe). By getting a gigabit router or basically integrating a gigabit switch into your router so if your router goes your whole network suffers.

As for brands i have had pretty good sucess with netgear pro-safe products something like a GS-105 or GS108 should do you good.

Also make sure your ethernet cable is CAT6 this is a must for proper and reliable gigabit networks. I think this item has allready been expressed atleast once.

[MARSTG]

yeah, my CAT6 is on the away, on truck for delivery

[BlueByte]

Cat6 is rated to 10Gbit where cat5e IS 1Gbit. So if you have cat5e then I wouldn't run out and replace all your wires just yet. Past that I would personally get a 10/100 router that fits your needs with a good solid Gbit switch.

[lowfat]

You can still just use plain old Cat5 for 1 GigE. Cat6 isn't going to do anything for speed.

[misterd]

Originally Posted by BlueByte

Cat6 is rated to 10Gbit where cat5e IS 1Gbit. So if you have cat5e then I wouldn't run out and replace all your wires just yet. Past that I would personally get a 10/100 router that fits your needs with a good solid Gbit switch.

What he said. Unless you have a 100+ Mbit internet connection. All the devices that are generally called routers are actually a combination of both a router and a switch.

[MARSTG]

Originally Posted by lowfat

You can still just use plain old Cat5 for 1 GigE. Cat6 isn't going to do anything for speed.

Indeed, but unfortunately not all CAT5 cables will give you gigabit speeds while the CAT6 are guaranteed for gigabit speeds. I got my CAT6 cables tonight, installed them, and transfer rate jumped from 11MB/s to 42-44MB/s. Transferring large HD files over my home network become so much easier now! As for the switch/router choice I would incline for a gigabit router as it eliminates one step of latency and also the setup will be easier, I have 3 devices now : modem/router/switch and is a mess of cables, network and power, as the adapters for all 3 do not have place on a single power bar either, I have to use a second one too.

[BlueByte]

Something is bottlenecking your speeds even after your jump. Are you transferring to a home NAS or running on a old hard drive? Thats not even close to Gbit speeds, you should be seeing a consistent ~100MB/s with a large file like a HD video file. If you are happy with your speeds that's cool and ignore this next part.

If you want to see if its PC hardware or network slowing you down create a RAM disk on two machines big enough to hold a 2-4GB file and copy that file from one locations RAM drive to the next locations RAM drive. Look at your network traffic in the task manager, if it is running 99%-100% you should be good. The Windows copy guess at transfer speeds blows and is never accurate(though it gets it right by accident the odd time).

[MARSTG]

I am pretty sure I am still bottle-necked somewhere,the drive that I was copying from is a 2TB Samsung Spinpoint F4 so I know is not the drive. But for the moment I am pretty happy with the performance. As for the RAM drive, I don't need to do that test, the boot drives on both systems are SSDs I could test with them directly.

[MARSTG]

I removed the Intel Gigabit NIC and activated the onboard Realtek and transferred some files, and now they are topping at 70MB/s