Upgrading to Gigabit?

alexjholland

alexjholland

alexjholland

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Joined
8 Oct 2006
Posts
322
Hey

We just got a Linksys WAG320N, which is going well so far.

Whilst the rest of the house use wireless, I have a 15-20 metre long piece of Cat 5e cable going under the floorboards and down to my basement conversion bedroom. (I also get a decent wireless signal for laptop/mobile phone browsing)

The cable then enters a little Broadcom 10/100 switch, where it is connected to:
- Windows 7 PC
- XBox 360
- Macbook

As the WAG320N is Gigabit, it's got me interested in upgrading my entire setup to Gigabit by purchasing a new switch. I'm looking to buy a second XBox soon and am likely to buy a Popcorn Hour box (perhaps even a PS3) next year - so want to future-proof with an 8-port device.

The Netgear GS608 switch has an average of five stars from 40 reviews on a popular Jungle-themed website, is Gigabit, 8-port and only £40.

My main uses are torrenting, watching documentaries online, XBox Live and streaming media between devices. We have a 6Mb BT connection.

Questions:
- How do I double-check my PC LAN card (five years old) is Gigabit compatible?
- Is this the best router option?
- What kind of gains should I see upgrading to Gigabit?

Thanks!
 
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Answering your questions in order:

1.) Go to Device Manager, grab the details of your LAN card, have a Google search and you'll soon find if it supports 1Gb. Or you could go in to the LAN card status and check if you can select 1Gb under 'negotiation'

2.) Looks like a decent enough switch, Netgear are a good name etc and £40 for that many ports seems the average

3.) Well, the XBOX360 only has a 100mbit connection, the PS3 has Gigabit but you'll find that it only really runs around 90mbit max and similarly the Popcorn A/C200 units also have a Gigabit but only run properly when set to 100mbit (lots of issues with Gb on these, I'm sure Gb has actually been disabled in the latest firmware).

You'll only really see a benefit if you do large file transfers or 1080p HD streaming, and ONLY if both devices support Gigabit properly, which in your setup leaves the PC and the Macbook (possibly).
 
Aha. The clue's in the name: 'Marvell Yukon 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller' - and configure has '1000Mbps in Full Duplex' as an option. So it appears it is compatible.

Hmm. Slightly disappointing in the gains there.. Am I right in thinking a 6Mb broadband connection isn't fast enough to see the difference in internet speed with Gigabit? As in, I'd have to have at least 100Mbps broadband for it to work any faster?

Regardless, I'm still likely to buy it. I'm hoping this Netgear might be better as it's simply good, rather than a Broadcom (no-name) switch. I'd like to know I'm all Gigabit, anyway - and £40 isn't bad.

- Is it likely to make any difference to performance when people play movies from my PC's hard drive on their laptops, connected over wireless-N, if the router they're streaming from is connected to my PC at 1000MBps?

- Am I likely to get any compatibility issues with 1000MBps? I only ask, due to the Popcorn Hour issue you mentioned.

Thanks again for your practical advice - you're an asset to the forum!
 
alexjholland said:
Am I right in thinking a 6Mb broadband connection isn't fast enough to see the difference in internet speed with Gigabit? As in, I'd have to have at least 100Mbps broadband for it to work any faster?
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Yep that's right.

- Is it likely to make any difference to performance when people play movies from my PC's hard drive on their laptops, connected over wireless-N, if the router they're streaming from is connected to my PC at 1000MBps?
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Highly unlikely, as even though your wireless connections may show as connected at '130mb~' or whatever, actual throughput will almost certainly top out at under 100mb. This is unless you're connected to a 5GHz network at 300mb where 100mb ethernet would then become the bottleneck, but even then, it's unlikely you'll stream any kind of video that would have peak throughput of 100mb+.

- Am I likely to get any compatibility issues with 1000MBps? I only ask, due to the Popcorn Hour issue you mentioned.
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Out of all the equipment you own, the PCH is the only one that I know of to have issues with Gigabit. I own an A200 and I had to manually change settings to 100mb as it would keep cutting out when connected at Gb speeds. I still manage 10MB/sec read and 7.5MB/sec write across FTP to the PCH, so perfectly fine really.

Like you say, the Gb router isn't massively expensive and it's nice to have the whole network at Gb speeds, just don't expect to notice any great performance gains.

Thanks again for your practical advice - you're an asset to the forum!
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alexjholland said:
I have a 15-20 metre long piece of Cat 5e cable ....
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Not to teach you to suck eggs, but as you only mentioned in you first post about replacing the switch I felt that I should point out that Cat5E will not support gigabit and it will need replacing with Cat6 cable for all your interlinks and patch leads.

Im sure you knew this already, but just making it clear as nothing else has been mentioned on this thread about it.
 
farmer said:
Not to teach you to suck eggs, but as you only mentioned in you first post about replacing the switch I felt that I should point out that Cat5E will not support gigabit and it will need replacing with Cat6 cable for all your interlinks and patch leads.
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where do you get that nonsense from? Cat5e will support gigabit network fine - you do not need cat6 at all.
 
booyaka said:
where do you get that nonsense from? Cat5e will support gigabit network fine - you do not need cat6 at all.
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Indeed, I do hate how people say that, maybe across large distances the quality would show but on runs around the home it'd be fine.

I've got GBE round the flat running on nothing other that Cat5E and i'm definately getting Gigabit speeds going by the file transfers across the LAN.
 
alexjholland said:
My main uses are torrenting, watching documentaries online, XBox Live and streaming media between devices. We have a 6Mb BT connection.

- What kind of gains should I see upgrading to Gigabit?

Thanks!
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None, In your case you would just be future proofing you setup, You will be able to transfer files between PC's faster but none of your main uses will see a benefit of 1000BASE-T over 100BASE-TX, this is because your not hitting the limits of the bandwidth on 100BASE-TX.

Imagine a road with 2 lanes, then you add another 18 (its hypothetical) you then have 20 lanes, 10x the original lanes so can take 10x the traffic, however if the speed limit remains the same each car will take just as long to complete its journey. of course if the 2 lane road didnt have enough room for all the cars ten the would be a bottleneck but the things you say you do shouldn't "fill" the 100BASE-TX.

OFC if you are playing Xbox while watching a documentary on the PC and torrenting and streaming files to the macbook that would do it ;)
 
farmer said:
Not to teach you to suck eggs, but as you only mentioned in you first post about replacing the switch I felt that I should point out that Cat5E will not support gigabit and it will need replacing with Cat6 cable for all your interlinks and patch leads.

Im sure you knew this already, but just making it clear as nothing else has been mentioned on this thread about it.
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Cat5e supports gigabit over the full 100m length, and 10Gb over very short lengths. Cat6 extends the length of 10Gb but still not the full length where as Cat6a can do 10Gb over the full 100m.
 
Why does everybody say Cat5 won't run at gigabit speeds?! Seems to be happening more often on these forums.

If you're unsure of something, don't give out wrong advice!
 
farmer said:
Not to teach you to suck eggs, but as you only mentioned in you first post about replacing the switch I felt that I should point out that Cat5E will not support gigabit and it will need replacing with Cat6 cable for all your interlinks and patch leads.
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That's incorrect I'm afraid.
Out of interest why do you think that? Have you kitted out your home with cat6 and are trying to justify the (unecessary) expenditure? I do not understand people that make the mistake of suggesting that cat6 is a requirement for gigabit speeds. Are you reading this on a google search somewhere? We see it time and time again on this forum. Cat5e WILL DO GIGABIT SPEEDS. For more detail on the limits see above, but the fact is it is fine for all but the silliest of long runs. I speak from experience having laid it with my bare hands many a time.
 
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