Gigabit Network

[John0616]

I've tried reading different articles on this, but everything I read seems to to tell me something different...

Right now in our office we have two servers and three desktops all of which have network cards that support gigabit network speeds, however the switch linking all of these together is only 100 speed so therefore that's as fast as we can get. If we were to simply swap out the switch to a gigabit switch and upgrade the cabling as necessary would we then be able to reach higher speeds in this segment of our network, or does every device connected to the network have to support gigabit speed in order for this to work--including all printers, routers, media devices, and other machines that are part of the network, but not in the office and really don't require the faster speed. In other words is it possible to have a network that is partially gigabit and partially not? And if so are there any reccomendations in terms of hardware and are there any other special considerations to be made?

 

[cajuntank]

All systems do not need to be 1Gb. Yes you can have partially 1Gb and partially not. Having the servers communicating at 1Gb would be beneficial as they are serving multiple users. The bigger bandwidth will offer users a faster and better user experience... it's pretty self explanatory...Having as much "serving" equipment at 1Gb is best and having as much "serving" and client machines are better. Having so few machines and servers, you probably don't have much utilization out of the 100Mb unless you are running some very data intensive application, but if the upgrade is cost effective, then do it. You only need CAT5e cable to ensure 1Gb, but I have seen 1Gb work just fine on CAT5 as well. All of the other peripherals you mentioned would tend to be fairly costly at the 1Gb level (not sure about what media devices your talking about), so for example... a router with a 1Gb interface is going to run you major money and your probably only connecting a internet circuit of a few Mb. A 100Mb connection on the LAN side is fine unless were talking hundreds of users. Same with printing and most likely your media devices (again though, not quite sure what they are).

I don't feel like I explained this too well, but for your small amount of machines, it's nice if you do upgrade computers and servers to 1Gb, but it's not paramount.

 

[John0616]

Actually that was pretty clear..Thank-you. We are looking at a 1G network primarily because Retail Pro runs accross the network in the office and is just painfully slow at the current connection speed--We are more used to running this in a terminal server environment which was of course very fast--although not without other issues not the least of which being that the neither the software maker nor our VAR support this type of installation. I would agree though that were it not for RRPO, we really would be fine with the 100MB. Anyway not to get off on a tangent I just wanted to be certain that what you are saying is that if we were to connect our three desktop machines and two servers to a 1GB/100MB switch then these machines and the servers should communincate at 1GB, and that this would still remain true even if we were to then add say a Printer, TeraStation, and a Sonos that all only communicate at 100MB to the same switch. Several years ago when we had asked our Network Tech about this he said this was not possible and that 1GB networks require ALL devices on the network to communicate at 1GB otherwise EVERYTHING defaults back to 100MB. Of course 1GB was a fairly new technology back then and maybe things have changed, or maybe he was just plain mistaken. Either way, we just want to be sure before making any kind of hardware investment. Thank-you again for all of your help.

 

[cajuntank]

Any 1Gb switch will autonegotiate between 10/100/1000Mb on th RJ45 copper ports. The switch might have SFP, MiniGBIC, or GBIC ports so that fiber media tranceivers can be added, and these are 1Gb only, but again, the copper ports would autonegotiate between 10, 100, and 1000Mb(1Gb) to the NIC's fastest connection. So you can have a device running at 10Mb, one at 100Mb, and one at 1Gb and they all will talk just fine with each other. Just make note of your cabling... make sure it was terminated properly (568B or 568A...just google search either number and you'll see what I mean) as this will split the appropriate wires in the cable to allow 1Gb speed connectivity. This, along with proper cable grade of CAT5e or better (like I said before, CAT5 could work if cable was of good quality and equipment's specs gave a little cusion for it).