Quick home Gigabit network question

LOAM · 17 Jan 2013 at 14:05

Have acquired a gigbit switch but am wondering what will happen with the below network

The NAS and the PC's are all GB Ethernet ready but the Draytek router and WAP are only 100Mbps as are some of the other peripherals connected to the switch. Is it safe to assume that where GB connections are available it will maintain 1000Mbps or will having slower connections on the network bring the whole lot down to the lowest denominator ?

The NAS is streaming media to our TV's at the moment over WI/FI and that is currently fine until I get round to installing some more cat5e.

The router and the WAP both have 4 port switches on the back so if it was more advantageous to group the slower devices together I can do this from the patch panel.

Finally apologies for potentially a simple question and terrible sketch

Uhtred · 17 Jan 2013 at 14:31

LOAM said:
Is it safe to assume that where GB connections are available it will maintain 1000Mbps or will having slower connections on the network bring the whole lot down to the lowest denominator ?

It will maintain 1000mbps where it can so you don't need to worry

LOAM · 17 Jan 2013 at 14:32

Good, many thanks. I realise I could have tested it and not posted but switch isn't here yet

bledd · 17 Jan 2013 at 14:48

Yup, the gigabit devices will work at gigabit

bertles86 · 17 Jan 2013 at 20:25

All capable devices will run at gigabit so long as the patch from your DrayTek to the switch is gigabit.

Phemo · 17 Jan 2013 at 20:44

bertles86 said:
All capable devices will run at gigabit so long as the patch from your DrayTek to the switch is gigabit.

No, that isn't important. The gigabit devices hooked up to the gigabit switch will operate at gigabit and the 100Mbit devices hooked up to the gigabit switch will operate at 100Mbit. One or two devices at 100Mbit will not bring the whole speed down as each port is seperate.

kitkat9933 · 17 Jan 2013 at 20:49

Phemo said:
No, that isn't important. The gigabit devices hooked up to the gigabit switch will operate at gigabit and the 100Mbit devices hooked up to the gigabit switch will operate at 100Mbit. One or two devices at 100Mbit will not bring the whole speed down as each port is seperate.

What this guy said. Just make sure your using a gigabit cable. If your running over 30 metres of cable make sure its CAT 6A, otherwise 5E or 6 will be sufficient.

bertles86 · 17 Jan 2013 at 20:52

Phemo said:
No, that isn't important. The gigabit devices hooked up to the gigabit switch will operate at gigabit and the 100Mbit devices hooked up to the gigabit switch will operate at 100Mbit. One or two devices at 100Mbit will not bring the whole speed down as each port is seperate.

Yes. It is.

The router does the routing (hint is in the name), if you are looking for gigabit speeds, and the link from router to switch is not gigabit then you have your first bottleneck.

pepp77 · 17 Jan 2013 at 20:56

kitkat9933 said:
What this guy said. Just make sure your using a gigabit cable. If your running over 30 metres of cable make sure its CAT 6A, otherwise 5E or 6 will be sufficient.

Cat5E and Cat6 are both fine upto 100m (most cablers will run to a max of 95m), my longest single run was 98metres as it just had to be run.

bertles86 said:
Yes. It is.

The router does the routing (hint is in the name), if you are looking for gigabit speeds, and the link from router to switch is not gigabit then you have your first bottleneck.

The router is only important if the traffic is going via the internet, other than that it doesn't touch it and will go from one gigabit device to the switch and then directly to the other gigabit device.

LOAM · 17 Jan 2013 at 21:26

So long as traffic from the NAS to the 2 PC's is 1000Mbps then cool. The internet connection isn't 100Mbps anyway so traffic from router is limited by that anyway.

Stelly · 17 Jan 2013 at 21:27

I recommed getting a decent switch to maintain throughput

Stelly

KIA · 17 Jan 2013 at 21:45

bertles86 said:
The router does the routing (hint is in the name), if you are looking for gigabit speeds, and the link from router to switch is not gigabit then you have your first bottleneck.

Max speed his connection could be is 120Mb/s. It isn't going to matter.

LOAM · 17 Jan 2013 at 22:35

The internet connection is only 20Mbps anyway.

bigredshark · 17 Jan 2013 at 22:40

bertles86 said:
Yes. It is.

The router does the routing (hint is in the name), if you are looking for gigabit speeds, and the link from router to switch is not gigabit then you have your first bottleneck.

No, it doesn't matter because the host to host traffic isn't routing, it's switching. OSI model 101...

Phemo · 17 Jan 2013 at 22:47

bertles86 said:
Yes. It is.

The router does the routing (hint is in the name), if you are looking for gigabit speeds, and the link from router to switch is not gigabit then you have your first bottleneck.

But having a VM connection, his Internet connection isn't Gigabit. He also doesn't have any other computers plugged into the router according to his diagram and wireless clients are unlikely to care either. Regular clients within the same subnet won't go via the router because as you say, the router does the routing, so clients in the same subnet won't need to route outside of it.

LOAM · 18 Jan 2013 at 13:18

Right I am all up and running. its 8 times faster now LOL

Thats a 5gig MKV transfer peaking at 71MB/s. So really pleased

deshepherd · 18 Jan 2013 at 14:39

bertles86 said:
Yes. It is.

The router does the routing (hint is in the name), if you are looking for gigabit speeds, and the link from router to switch is not gigabit then you have your first bottleneck.

No. It isn't

The switch does the switching (hint is in the name) of the connections from its ports to send packets to the correct destinations on the (same) network. Any switch nowadays will be able to handle different ports at different frequencies so data packets from one Gb port to another Gb port will go at Gb speed.

The router does the routing (yes hint is in the name) of packets between different networks - here between the LAN and the WAN. I think by definition a router only has 2 ports - one for each network (or possibly may be a generalization to a number of ports each on a different network). Most "routers" for home networks have 1 WAN and several LAN ports (+ Wireless) so they are actually a combination of a router and a LAN-side switch.

deshepherd · 18 Jan 2013 at 14:52

LOAM said:
Right I am all up and running. its 8 times faster now LOL

Thats a 5gig MKV transfer peaking at 71MB/s. So really pleased

Got similar speeds when I bought a couple of cheap Gb switches to replace old 100Mb ones in my network ... remember trying it out copying what In thought was a big file and it finished before I was able to click on the "show more" on the windows copy pop-up to see the speed!