Gigabit Ethernet 1

[brentk05]

I am a just a high end user. I am paying for a 9 meg connection and I am trying to take advantage of it. I believe gigabit ethernet would be the way to go. I have already picked out a gigabit ethernet card and router. My question is whether or not I need a gigabit modem to for the set up to work? Anyone know?

 

[jimbopalmer]

OK, you have a 9 meg pipe to the outside world. Nothing you do internally will make that pipe bigger. If you were using 10 meg internally you might have times when you were limiting yourself. Maybe.

100 meg will never be the limiting factor in your internet speed, neither will 1 gig or 10 gig or 40 gig or 100 gig. Have fun, spend money, but it will make no difference to your internet speed.

If your modem is old enough, it may have a 10 meg ethernet port. If so, and I have no idea, as your gave no details, then a modem with a 100 meg ethernet may be less blocking. Again, if you can find them, 1 gig, 10 gig, 40 gig, and 100 gig devices also will not block the Internet and can absorb excess cash you seem determined to spend.

Internally, 100 meg will be WAY faster than 10 meg, in part because of duplex and collisions. 1 gig will tend to only be 2 to 3 times faster than 100 meg, as your computer is limited internally. 10 gig, 40 gig, and 100 gig only matter for trunking because no Personal Computer can approach those throughputs. And darn few Mainframes.

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[brentk05]

Ok informative. I know I can not increase the pipe to the outside world. I guess my question is am I able to take advantage of the 9 meg pipe with a 100 mgbit nic, router and modem. Would I get the same performance if it was a 5meg connection.

 

[brentk05]

After reading over that post again I realize that question was pretty much answered. So an internal 100 mgbit path (nic,router,modem)to a 9meg connection will be able to handle anything the 9meg connection could throw at it. That sound right?

 

[jimbopalmer]

Yes, unless you have internal activity on a massive scale. If one computer is sending all your cable channels encoded via IP to another computer, perhaps gigabit sounds wiser internally, but the modem is still not involved, so can be 100 meg.

10 meg gear is frequently half duplex (think walkie talkie, push to talk) rather than full duplex like newer gear. (think telephones, talk anytime) so 10 meg is not 10 times slower than 100 meg but can approach 60 times slower. (Waiting to be sure no one else is talking eats time, both sides retransmitting when some one WAS talking REALLY eats time)

The speed of your Hard Disk, bus, and the design of Windows disk shares, make it difficult for PCs to be more than 2 to 3 times faster at gig networking than 100 meg networking, so it is not the impressive speed up that 100 meg was over 10 meg. (unless you have many PCs, then it helps them not slow each other down)

I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[LawnBoy]

An excellent description, jimbo.