[Lu Zhun]

Hello everyone, and hope you all are doing well. I am not sure if a thread or post like this was already made, but I am just seeing what you all might recommend as far as getting the best network equipment or setup that you all have found to work without having to upgrade to expensive fiber optics which I don't think will work since we use Cable Internet here. Sorry, but this is going to be a long post to explain the situation. And this may lead into other topics or discussions, which I would rather see discussions about anything related to this, than no replies, comments, or suggestions at all.

I guess this topic would be more towards people who use Cable Internet and maybe what they have found to be a "better" setup as far as getting the most out of the speed that is given by using Cable Internet if that makes sense and/or for anyone who has tested different pieces of equipment and have gotten better results i.e a certain brand or type of NIC card that works better with a certain Router, etc.... Sorry if any of this sounds jibberish, but I am no expert at networking, but I do know enough to upgrade the components involved. I will tell you what I have recently bought to upgrade our home network here to gigabit if that is even possible here in the USA. I heard from a few places that USA is "behind the times" on gigabit technology or the speed of internet in general I suppose, but what I am trying to do is get the most out of it if can and if you all have any recommendations about what I can do further or replace a certain piece of equipment with a "better" or more useful one, then feel free to let me know, this is why I have posted it, to find out what I can on what I can do even more than I have already. All of our Computers here have Windows XP home edition Sp2 if that helps any.

The equipment I am about to post is what I have recently bought and is still on it's way here, and I may not install any of it soon after it arrives if I get a few good replies or recommendations for something else which may work better than what I have bought, in which if I research it further and am convinced, then I will return the items for a refund to put towards that new recommended piece. Umm, I am going to post links to the equipment as well if that is alright, if it is against forum rules, I will take out the links immediately since they are pointing outside of the forums. Ok, for starters, I looked at upgrading the router to a wireless D-Link DGL-4500 IEEE 802.3/3u, IEEE 802.11a/b/g, IEEE802.11n Draft Xtreme N Gaming Router
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833127243

That way, we can have wireless capability like we haven't had here before and also have gigabit as an option for the 4 ports on the back.

Then I looked at getting a nice NIC card that has gigabit as an option as well, since I've heard it helps out the cpu when you put an actual NIC card in and I am not too sure if the motherboard's onboard NIC support gigabit or not. I was going to get the Killer NIC M1 for one computer and alot less expensive ones for the other computers. http://www.bigfootnetworks.com/killer-nic-m1/

The other NIC cards that I am trying out with this setup if I end up staying with it, is the D-Link DGE-530T 10/100/1000 Gigabit PCI Adapter. I thought that perhaps the router being a D-link and having a D-link NIC might work alot better than just buying a random NIC card. I am not sure what the best features to look for in a NIC card are for smoothness and hardly any lag when downloading or transferring files would be if they state any features.
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=284

The other NIC I am trying out in this setup is Intel Pro 1000MT Gigabit Desktop PCI Network Card
http://www.intel.com/network/connect...er_adapter.htm

I've heard that this NIC has alot of "features" and is pretty good, and I thought that it might work better since my graphics card is an Nvidia and usually I've always thought that Nvidia works better with Intel, etc... if name brands matter. I also noticed that it states "Server" more often, and not Desktop if that makes any difference since it goes into the pci slot anyways.

Another thing I have upgraded is the network cabling. I have checked out Cat 7 cabling, which I've heard hasn't "officially" come out yet, but may have in other countries but may not have in USA yet? but this cabling is supposed to get up to 600mhz speed, so I thought I would get a small one to connect from the Modem to the router and another longer one from port 1 to this computer, to see if that helps out any with speed. Here is a link to that cable, the description makes it sound very high quality being double shielded and having gold plated ends and whatnot and it has to be Imported..
http://cgi.ebay.com/CAT-7-NETWORK-CA...d=p3911.c0.m14

The rest of the computers here use Enhanced Cat5 network cables with a speed of 550mhz. I think they were "patch" cables and it says Cat5e outside on the actual cable instead of Cat 6, so I thought maybe 50mhz more would increase the bandwidth or whatnot by getting the Cat 7 ones for this computer as a test.

Well.. that's it for now or until I hear from you all. The only thing I think I haven't upgraded as far as the network is concerned is the actual Cable Modem which was provided by our Cable Internet Provider and may be an older model if you think that is a necessary component to upgrade as well or know of one that lets you get higher speed than a standard modem, then feel free to let me know. I also might upgrade to Roadrunner Turbo with Powerboost if that will ultimately affect the overall speed of the network.

Ending Notes: Thanks for reading all the way and/or for responding. I am just curious how much this setup that is coming in is actually going to help as far as improvement is concerned or how much better it can be combined with anything else. If you all know of a software that helps out with network performance or testing of the network speed, I would greatly appreciate any info on that. Have a nice day!

[zx10guy]

If you are thinking you are going to get any speeds greater than what the ISP is providing you, then you're going to sorely disappointed. No matter what you do, you're only going to get what the ISP is going to give you. With cable it can be anything from 6 Mbps to 12-15 Mbps down. It really depends on their infrastructure. Changing the modem won't give you faster speeds than what the ISP is provisioning for your circuit.

As far as cabling goes, Cat5e and Cat 6 both officially meet the specs for GigE transmission. Going with Cat 6 gives you additional head room as the cable can support a higher frequency. But I am not aware of any technology which will trickle down to consumers faster than GigE which can utilize either Cat 5e or Cat 6. 10 GigE networks are currently running over fiber or CNA copper. Also, some people have used Cat 5 cable with success on GigE networks but again officially, they do not meet the specs.

The Big Foot card you referenced is basically a NIC with TOE (TCP offload engine) capability. It has a processor on the NIC to help alleviate the CPU overhead of processing TCP traffic. Some people find a beneficial use of this but it is definitely case dependent. The typical use of TOE cards is when iSCSI is being used.

The biggest hurdle for current systems is not what the network can provide for you but what the hosts can throw in the network. Your hosts have to have the proper configuration as in large enough data bus for the GigE NIC along with fast subsystems like hard disk I/O to even attempt to saturate the available bandwidth of GigE.

[Courtneyc]

As zx10guy explained, if you are trying to improve your Internet access, you would be able to saturate most cable modems just using 100Mbit cards. Also, for the record, although Cat5e is rated for GigE, currently there are no copper cables on the market that can actually go GigE, including the upcoming Cat 7.

Either card you mentioned will do fine. Both have onboard processors that will manage traffic instead of your processor. The D-Link you mentioned costs about $9 around here. I have the DGL 4500 you mentioned. It's a great router, but make sure you update the router's BIOS. It fixes a problem with the router locking up. Afterwards, it works perfectly.

Going GigE on you network will not increase Internet speed, but it will make a dramatic improvement on your local network. Just make sure every device that you connect uses GigE. With the exception of some LinkSys switches, if you plug in a 100Mbit device into a 1000Mbit switch, all devices go at the speed of the slowest device. (By the way, this includes the DGL 4500). I solved the problem by using a LinkSys SD2005 to plug in the two laptops on my network that run at 100Mbit.

If you can go GigE, go for it. I did. But don't spend a lot of money getting there. It is an improvement on your network, but it won't make your printer go faster (most are 100Mbit), and it won't improve your Internet speed. But it does improve the speed of your local network. For me, it improved the speed of my media server, my domain controller (and DNS) and the speed of transferring files from computer to computer.

Courtney

[JohnWill]

If you go gigabit, you might also consider making sure all the equipment supports jumbo frames as well, this can be another significant performance boost for large file transfers.

[Lu Zhun]

Well, thanks all for replying. That clears up quite a bit. These upgrades should help improve the home network then and not of course the Internet Speed since can only get what ISP is sending to you, that makes sense. So about the only thing I have left to do then is to perhaps just upgrade the ISP's service to Roadrunner Turbo with Powerboost then for better speed eh? Also, do any of you know of any kind of network testing software or program that can accurately test the speed and/or connectivity of the network? Jumbo Frames sound important , would the NIC cards that are coming have Jumbo Frames? or would that even have anything to do with Jumbo Frames? Thanks again, I'll leave this left Unsolved in case others may want to add something else or what they feel is needed still.

[JohnWill]

Remember, jumbo frames are strictly for improving file/print sharing on your local network between locally connected machines. They won't do anything for Internet speeds.

Most current NIC hardware that supports gigabit should support jumbo frames. I'd check and make sure any gigabit switches you buy have that support as well.

[Squashman]

I personally don't think Road Runner Turbo is worth the money. If you have a Telco in your area that provides a fiber connection, you may want to take a look at that. I know Verizon and Qwest both offer Fiber services. That will get you a whole lot of bandwidth.

[JohnWill]

I know that unless something large changes, I'll never go back to Comcast from my Verizon FiOS, the speed and reliability are vastly improved over Comcast service.

[zx10guy]

Something I want to add about jumbo frames. Even if your switch hardware supports jumbo frames, your router must also support it. If you do find a router which supports jumbo frames, keep in mind, your internet performance is probably going to take a pretty big hit. The router is going to be your demarc where the jumbo frames are going to be fragmented as you cannot pass jumbo frames through to your ISP. As a result your router is going to burn CPU cycles fragmenting and assembling frames between the non-jumbo frame segment and the jumbo frame segment.

The short of it is, don't do it unless you really know what you're doing and can design a proper network schema to support jumbo frames.

[JohnWill]

Good place to ask zx10guy a question here.

Your statement about the router is interesting. I have jumbo frames enabled, and I know they are in fact being used on the LAN, since my transfer times for my NAS boxes was significantly improved by turning on jumbo frames. My router is the standard Actiontec MI424WR supplied by Verizon FiOS, and it has a 100mbit switch and clearly doesn't support jumbo frames.

The reason for the confusion is I've experienced no issues at all with my Internet speed download or uploads since turning on jumbo frames. I always thought, and my experience seems to bear this out, that this wouldn't be an issue.

[zx10guy]

Ok. So I had to do some more checking as I've never set up a full jumbo frame environment. But here is what I think is happening in your setup, John. And I'll correct some misconceptions I had about operating jumbo frames in a L2/L3 environment.

So setting up jumbo frames doesn't mean all frames traversing the switch must max out at the 9000 or so byte size. Frames will still be forwarded if the byte size is still say 1500. Where jumbo frames will cause issues is if you traverse devices in the middle, typically routers, which do not support jumbo frames while the two end points are set to do jumbo frames. The performance hit will be the first router which needs to fragment the frames in both directions.

John, in your setup, this is what I think is happening. When your host setup to be able to send large byte sizes starts the initial TCP communication to your NAS. The initial negotiation says I can speak in large byte frames. The NAS will communicate back and say Ok, I can speak in the same sizing. So the next set of frames being sent will be sized large with data in it and as long as the switch supports this size framing, all is good.

In the case where your host talks to the Actiontec, the initial communication to it will be I need to get here as it is a default router but it also NATs/proxies the connection to the internet resource you are trying to get to. The initial TCP connection will set up the framing size. The Actiontec says...whoa....I can't speak this large so the host receiving this message backs down the MTU size of the frames it generates. The traffic that goes back and forth between devices at the layer 2 level is called MSS.

To confirm all the stuff I said above, you can do a packet sniff of your host and see the MSS negotiation and then look at the frame headers to see what MTU sizing is being used.

Sorry about the confusion and I learn a little something myself after consulting with my Cisco contact. I've always avoided implementing jumbo frames as in an enterprise where we control a lot of the intermediary hops, over looking proper frame sizing support can turn into a real nightmare. I'll have to do some experimenting in my home network to see how all this work for myself.

[JohnWill]

I think your last post agrees with what I understood was the process, which is why mine all works.

That being the case, as long as everything is connected to a gigabit switch that supports jumbo frames, the router can be pretty much any router.

FWIW, I also have computers that have 100mbit connections in the network, and they work just fine as well, obviously not supporting jumbo frames to those workstations.

Naturally, implementing jumbo frames in a small home network is MUCH simpler than getting it running in an enterprise network with lots of hops and hundreds of workstations! I'm sure that would take a bit more planning.