[lug] Network Question

[John Hernandez]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 1:58 PM, kevin kempter <kevin at kevinkempterllc.com> 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.
>
<snip>
>
> 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?
>

You may find that full duplex fast-e is plenty fast, particularly
coming from wifi.  I'd start by running one cat6 from a desktop to the
existing Netgear switch and disabling the wireless adapter.  I suspect
you'll be plenty happy with the results, and if so, cable the
remaining desktops.  You can always drop in a new switch Gig-e switch
down the road if your NAS bottlenecks on fast-e.  Graph the load on
the NAS ethernet interface to help you determine if it's time for a
Gig-e switch.