Want to add a Gigabit Backbone

[Barneye]

OK I have a question. I want to setup a Gigabit Backbone for my network. I have 6 servers running NT 4.0 SP6a, some have Gigabit on the motherboard, others only 10/100. Currently using 10/100 switches to connect 60 users.I will be upgrading 3 servers to Windows 2003 and adding an Exchange server to the network. I plan to upgrade the domain to active directory.

I want to add one Gigabit switch and upgrade the servers that don't have it to gigabit Nic's, and connect the 10/100 switches to the gigabit switch. I have a few users that transfer large graphic files over the network, that I may upgrade to Gigabit Nic's as well. The building is new and is run with Cat5e.


What am I missing? This seems to be an easy upgrade to give me more network bandwidth.


Thanks!

 

[jimbopalmer]

Optimistic answer: The gig servers will all be faster and there will be no downside for the other computers.

Pesimistic answer: while each gig server will be faster than 100 meg ethernet, it is unlikely to be ten times faster, as bottlenecks in the server will be the limiting factor.

expect a 2 to 4 times increase, which is not bad

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

 

[Barneye]

What is this I have heard about "jumbo frames"? Also, can the clients (Windows 98, XP) use "jumbo frames"?



Any other problems I may encounter? I will be using a mixed domain of NT and Windows 2003 machines. The clients are all XP of Windows 98.


Thanks!

 

[jimbopalmer]

Jumbo Frames are non-standard, so YOU need to be sure ALL devices are compatible. Jumbo Frames will confuse programs which assume 1518 is the size of a packet. I am not a fan of Jumbo Frames.

If all other bottlenecks are removed for a self contained network, Jumbo Frames can reduce the CPU overhead. If CPU overhead was the last bottleneck, that can speed up throughput. If there are other bottlenecks, it will not speed up throughput, just reduce CPU utilizaation.

Server class NICs already offload the CPU, and produce standard packets.

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