[lug] Network Question

[Hugh Brown]

On Tue, Oct 07, 2008 at 01:58:55PM -0600, kevin kempter wrote:
> Hi BLUG;
>
> I want to try and take advantage of gigabit networking in my Home Office. I 
> recently bought a Lacie 2TB NAS RAID and I find it to be dog slow.
>
> Here's what I currently have:
>
> Qwest VDSL is routed into a 5-port hub. (I do this because my VIOP box 
> doesn't work if it's behind the firewall)
> The 5-port hub is a Netgear 5 port 10/100/1000 switch GS605 v2
>
> From the 5-Port hub I have one cat5 going to my VOIP box and one feeding 
> the router/firewall (a USR 8200)
>
> From the USR 8200 I have one cat5 feeding into a Netgear ProSafe 16 port  
> 10/100 switch
>
> I run cat5 connectons from the 16 port switch to the following:
>
> - a mac extreme airport base station (all the desktops use the wireless)
> - my Linux servers
> - The Lacie 2TB NAS
> - 2 network printers
>
>
> Here's my questions:
>
> can I upgrade only the Netgear ProSafe 16 port switsh for a gigabit switch 
> and get the benifits of the gigabit
>  bandwidth ?
>
> I assume I'll need to back off the wireless and run cat6 cables to the 
> Lacie NAS and the desktops that want to interact with it yes?
>
> Also, any suggestions per a replacement for my USR 8200 that allows client 
> VPN connections, gigabit ports and a
>   secure (yet easy to configure) firewall / router ?
>
>
> Thanks in advance..
>
> /Kevin

Yes, you can replace your Netgear ProSafe for a gigabit switch and get an increase in throughput (and you'd need to hardwire the systems too, 802.11g is probably giving you about 50% of the theoretical 54Mbps).  However, you may not be getting full gigabit speeds even after upgrading.  Gigabit exposes other bottlenecks in a system.  How fast can you get data off your disk?  How fast can you push that data across the PCI bus?  

This is a link describing the <50% for 802.11g
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=01434892

I've used iperf in the past to test network throughput.

Hugh

Hugh