Simple network question.

[Jayce]

I found myself a little stumped over this one, but I'm sure it's simple.

I have a router (WRT54G Linksys) with 10/100 ports + a 10/100 netgear switch. Say I upgrade my switch to 10/100/1000... and I transfer items from 1 computer to another on my switch. Since my switch would be gigabit, and the computers in question are connected to this switch, do the items I transfer move at gigabit speeds? Or does the data have to bounce on up to the router, therefore being bottlenecked @ 10/100 speeds?

 

[EricB]

run a crossover cable from the router to the gigabit switch so all of their port will all be internet ready otherwise only one of them will work on the internet. then run the computers through the switch. they will now be isolated from the router. if they have cat5e or cat6 cable running to them and you gigabit nic on your computer, you should be fine. people hear claim that regular cat 5 cable run just as fast, but trust me when I say that it don't.

I sometime transfer 500 gig or more through my computers networks and doing that with cat5 cable take 24-40 hours whereas it take a few hours with cat 6 cable

 

[Jayce]

Why would a crossover cable matter in this situation? All of my NIC's in question are 10/100/1000 capable. I don't have a crossover in my current setup, and it works fine. So why would I magically need a crossover in a 10/100/1000 5 port desktop switch when my 10/100 5 port desktop switch clearly doesn't need it?

 

[office politics]

you should need a crossover cable to connect two switches together. You may have "uplink" set on a particular port on your switch which would allow you to use a straight cable. Uplink effectively does the same thing a crossover cable does, connects different twisted pairs on each end.

As for the bottle neck, i think you will see gigabit speeds. a swtich provides direct paths to each port. Machines will only contact the default gateway when they need information that is not on the same subnet. The packets leaving the computer say I want to transfer with comp x. The switch says I know what port comp x is connected to and sends them through.

 

[mikesgroovin]

you should need a crossover cable to connect two switches together. You may have "uplink" set on a particular port on your switch which would allow you to use a straight cable. Uplink effectively does the same thing a crossover cable does, connects different twisted pairs on each end.

The 54g, 54gs, and 54gl series are auto-mdx all around. Straight cables should work just fine.

Jayce, depending on the switch you get will make a small difference. To be sure that you are getting the most from your new switch... Leave the router unplugged from the network for a little bit while the 2 computers transfer small files back and forth (5 minutes or so) just until the mac table for the computers alone is built...then plug the router's cable to the switch back in.

 

[Jayce]

Yeah, that explains the confusion... I have an uplink port. I actually forgot about crossovers being used to connect switches together cause at work we have switches that don't require crossovers. I only ever made 2-3 crossovers in my life, and that was in school. Once I graduated it seemed to be a thing of the past already!

Good idea about testing the speeds if I ever get a 10/100/1000 switch... Try with router plugged in and try without... I was just curious if "in theory" if I should expect to see 1 or the other.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

You should get a 1Gbps connection between the desktops and the new switch, but any outbound traffic is gonna be slower. That being said, unless you have UBER internet, a 100Mbps connection shouldn't bottleneck anything going/coming from the router.

and just to clear this up, switch/switch host/router host/host and router/router all should be connected using crossover cables. Except for switch/host configurations, stuff relying on auto-mdx.