Ladogaboy

I'm just curious about how much of a performance gain I'd see by going from a 10 Mbs network to a 100 Mbs. I'm thinking of upgrading to a switch (from a hub). The only problem is, one of my cards is only a 10 Mbs, not 10/100... I guess that'll have to go.

Anyway, to curb any of you smart a$$es out there saying, "Oh, it's 10 times faster.", I'm interested in REAL WORLD experiences. Is it worth the money, and will I really notice it in file transfers and what not.

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Jeffbx

Well, it all depends on what you do. On a big file transfer, you'll see a huge difference. Surfing the web, you won't see any difference at all. Gaming between 2 systems, you'll probably see a slight improvement. It all depends on the type of traffic you're sending over the wire.

BTW - real world numbers here - a 100Mbps connection actually runs anywhere from 50-80Mbps on average, so it's not even 10x faster

Ladogaboy

Ahh... thanks guys, that helps a lot. The main reason I was thinking of it was for file transfers. A 16 second difference doesn't seem like much though.

Anyway, my idea was to eventually get a Digital Video camera, so I might be transferring a lot of large video files. Also I was thinking of setting up a separate file server so all of the comps on the network could have access. Yes, I'm thinking of having a gateway so all of the comps can have internet access, but I know that won't be affected much by the change. Maybe, at most, there would be about 6 comps on the network...

As for gaming... hehe, depends on how many of you want to come over for a LAN party! But don't worry, this won't be for a little while.

DREDD

Definately get a switch. a Hub shares the bandwidth with all systems on it. so 2 systems on a 10Mbps hub would only be getting 5Mbps each where a switch gives each comp the full 10Mbps.

rajatQ2

switches are key - they cut down traffic across the device by more than 50% in most cases. The difference between a switch and a hub is based on why "repeated networking" sucks. if you want an explanation just ask, its pretty interesting stuff!
Anyway, most people won't need network throughput higher than 10mb/sec, just for the sheer reason that most hard drives can't put out that much data. I know, i know, SCSI is supposed to put out 80Mb/S, but that's guessing you have a ton of contiguous data, and an open channel to receive all that data. ATA stuff is probably capable of bursting that much data... but then again when do you see that stuff?

About gigabit ethernet cards and who would use them? What about a software firewall on a repeated network I've done IT work at two *****ty companies that have that, beleive it or not. Those could benefit from gigabit ethernet cards. How about a distributed system, like beowulf? thats some crazy stuff! But never at home, in today's world, that's a total waste!b ut a few years down the road who knows what will happen.

So in conclusion a switch is a better investment of your upgrade $$s, the NIC doesn't matter all that much. Good Luck.

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Jeffbx

Sounds like you definitely want to go to 100Mbps if you're doing lots of file transfers between your machines. With NIC costs under $20, that's a very worthwhile investment to speed up your LAN.

Ladogaboy

haha, yeah, the NICs aren't what I'm worried about. Come Feb, when I get a few in from Dell, I'll be fine. It's the switch that I'm worried about. I'm more or less just debating whether the cost difference between a 10 Mbs switch and a 100 Mbs switch is worth it. But I still have a few months for the prices to drop.