A question on Gigabit switches and routers

brakeinup · 7 Jul 2006 at 15:27

I am looking at going down the Gigabit road as the wife has to transfer lots of large image files after processing to a NAS box and other PC for backups.

Are the wireless routers with built in Gigabit switches fine for the job or is it best to seperate the switch from the router? Thanks

brakeinup · 7 Jul 2006 at 19:49

Thanks for the replies.

The network is going to be wired - the wireless is for the laptop.

Its a home network with 2 PC's with gigabit ethernet cards, a NAS (Buffalo LinkStation) with a gigabit ethernet connection and a laptop on wireless.

The main reason for the gigabit path is to speed up file transfers to the NAS and other PC.

I understand about a quality install for cabling and a good quality switch but I do not think there is any need to go to enterprise level hardware to speed up file transfers at home.

Thinking about it seperate hardware is usually better for the role it needs to do but if I can reduce the amount of peripherals and power adapters needed than that would be a better solution as long as theres a noticable speed increase from the current Linksys wireless routers' 100mb built in switch.

brakeinup · 7 Jul 2006 at 20:20

Avalon said:
If you do go gigabit make sure your hardware supports jumbo frames or you will find you don't get anything like the full benefit.

Thanks for the update.

After reading this http://sd.wareonearth.com/~phil/jumbo.html its a little clearer!

brakeinup · 8 Jul 2006 at 12:17

Im on ntl cable and am using the Linksys Wrt54G wireless router with the built in 100mb switch.

The NAS is just a Buffalo Linkstation 300gb with the gigabit NIC.

I am trying to reduce the amount of hardware that has to be plugged in, but if a separate gigabit switch is better than a router with a gigabit switch then I will buy a separate switch. If there is no major difference then I will get something like a Belkin wireless router with built in gigabit.

brakeinup · 9 Jul 2006 at 08:18

fluiduk said:
I would get seperate switch in case you move or switch broadband types in the future.

I have come to the same conclusion. The router I have does a great job. If I get a seperate switch then I can still go to 100mb if that fails.

Thanks for all of the replies