Gigabit lan setup

  • Thread starter Thread starter Harry Putnam
  • Start date Start date
H

Harry Putnam

I have one mobo with gigabit lan (K8V SE) and am about to setup
another machine with the gigabit cabability....also asus but
P4C800E-Deluxe.

I've never used gigabit lan but do have the adaptor on K8V working as
regular 10/100 with my gateway (A Netgear FVS318 router/firewall).
This is on a home setup with DSL Internet access.

Once I get the new machine setup in the lan I'm going to want to use
the gigabit speed between those two machines. Both are equiped for
video editing and will need to share massive video files measuring in
10s of Gb.

I'm sort of lost as to how to set this up. I guess I'll need a hub
that also talks gigabit?. My four home machines could be Something
like this simple diagram:

[INTERNET]
|
DSL modem
|
Netgear router/firewall (FVS318.. not gigabit)
| | |
10/100 | | | 10/100
MCH1 | MCH2
|
| 10/100
GIGABIT capable hub
| |
Gigabit GIGABIT
MCH3 MCH4

That is, an extra hub to pass the gigabit traffic between the two
Gigabit capable machines but it speaks 10/100 on the upstream side.

Or am I really over complicating this? Can these gigabit adapters
talk to each other in giga but to the rest of the network in 10/100?
 
Harry Putnam <[email protected]> said:
I have one mobo with gigabit lan (K8V SE) and am about to setup
another machine with the gigabit cabability....also asus but
P4C800E-Deluxe.

I've never used gigabit lan but do have the adaptor on K8V working as
regular 10/100 with my gateway (A Netgear FVS318 router/firewall).
This is on a home setup with DSL Internet access.

Once I get the new machine setup in the lan I'm going to want to use
the gigabit speed between those two machines. Both are equiped for
video editing and will need to share massive video files measuring in
10s of Gb.

I'm sort of lost as to how to set this up. I guess I'll need a hub
that also talks gigabit?. My four home machines could be Something
like this simple diagram:

[INTERNET]
|
DSL modem
|
Netgear router/firewall (FVS318.. not gigabit)
| | |
10/100 | | | 10/100
MCH1 | MCH2
|
| 10/100
GIGABIT capable hub
| |
Gigabit GIGABIT
MCH3 MCH4

That is, an extra hub to pass the gigabit traffic between the two
Gigabit capable machines but it speaks 10/100 on the upstream side.

Or am I really over complicating this? Can these gigabit adapters
talk to each other in giga but to the rest of the network in 10/100?
Click to expand...

To answer your last question first, TCP/IP automatically adjusts
to the rate of the slowest link in the path. AFAIK, this is based
on packet loss - network speed is adjusted when packets are lost.
Transfer speeds ramp up, until a packet is lost somewhere in
transit.

For your networking question, there is some background here:
http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/39061

You could start experimenting, by connecting the two computers
directly to one another. Assign IP addresses manually, then
experiment with setting up a "share", or use FTP, to see what
kinds of speeds are possible. You could do experiments with
different packet sizes or window sizes, and perhaps have
a look on some of the older web sites that talked about tweaks
for network performance. The delay between computers will be
low, but perhaps there are some tweaks that will improve performance.

A cheap solution, would be to expand that experiment, by putting
a 10/100 NIC card in one of the two gigabit computers, so you
could connect to the rest of your network. You could run ICS in
the computer with two network interfaces. (The only reason I'm
even mentioning this solution, is if large packet size turns out
to be advantageous in your first experiment, then perhaps ICS
will allow packets on either side of ICS to be different sizes ?
I somehow doubt that a cheap switch would allow that, but perhaps
the fragment bit handles all of that automatically, when packets
head for the Internet.)

1Gb/s 100Mb/s
GbE #1 -------- GbE #2 ----------- Netgear

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/ics/ics.htm

There are some cheap gigabit ethernet switches, like $80 for a
four or five port switch, but the connected nodes are all on the
same subnet. A real switch would cost $750 or so, but supports
subnets (a layer 3 switch). I don't know anything about switching,
so I'll stop right there :-)

HTH,
Paul
 
Paul said:
Harry Putnam <[email protected]> said:
I have one mobo with gigabit lan (K8V SE) and am about to setup
another machine with the gigabit cabability....also asus but
P4C800E-Deluxe.

I've never used gigabit lan but do have the adaptor on K8V working as
regular 10/100 with my gateway (A Netgear FVS318 router/firewall).
This is on a home setup with DSL Internet access.

Once I get the new machine setup in the lan I'm going to want to use
the gigabit speed between those two machines. Both are equiped for
video editing and will need to share massive video files measuring in
10s of Gb.

I'm sort of lost as to how to set this up. I guess I'll need a hub
that also talks gigabit?. My four home machines could be Something
like this simple diagram:

[INTERNET]
|
DSL modem
|
Netgear router/firewall (FVS318.. not gigabit)
| | |
10/100 | | | 10/100
MCH1 | MCH2
|
| 10/100
GIGABIT capable hub
| |
Gigabit GIGABIT
MCH3 MCH4

That is, an extra hub to pass the gigabit traffic between the two
Gigabit capable machines but it speaks 10/100 on the upstream side.

Or am I really over complicating this? Can these gigabit adapters
talk to each other in giga but to the rest of the network in 10/100?
Click to expand...

To answer your last question first, TCP/IP automatically adjusts
to the rate of the slowest link in the path. AFAIK, this is based
on packet loss - network speed is adjusted when packets are lost.
Transfer speeds ramp up, until a packet is lost somewhere in
transit.

For your networking question, there is some background here:
http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/39061

You could start experimenting, by connecting the two computers
directly to one another. Assign IP addresses manually, then
experiment with setting up a "share", or use FTP, to see what
kinds of speeds are possible. You could do experiments with
different packet sizes or window sizes, and perhaps have
a look on some of the older web sites that talked about tweaks
for network performance. The delay between computers will be
low, but perhaps there are some tweaks that will improve performance.

A cheap solution, would be to expand that experiment, by putting
a 10/100 NIC card in one of the two gigabit computers, so you
could connect to the rest of your network. You could run ICS in
the computer with two network interfaces. (The only reason I'm
even mentioning this solution, is if large packet size turns out
to be advantageous in your first experiment, then perhaps ICS
will allow packets on either side of ICS to be different sizes ?
I somehow doubt that a cheap switch would allow that, but perhaps
the fragment bit handles all of that automatically, when packets
head for the Internet.)

1Gb/s 100Mb/s
GbE #1 -------- GbE #2 ----------- Netgear

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/ics/ics.htm

There are some cheap gigabit ethernet switches, like $80 for a
four or five port switch, but the connected nodes are all on the
same subnet. A real switch would cost $750 or so, but supports
subnets (a layer 3 switch). I don't know anything about switching,
so I'll stop right there :-)

HTH,
Paul
Click to expand...

Actually the cheap switches can have multiple subnets running over them as
they would be unmanaged and not have any network address assigned they are
about as bumb as you can get in switch land.
 
(e-mail address removed) (Paul) writes:


[...]
A cheap solution, would be to expand that experiment, by putting
a 10/100 NIC card in one of the two gigabit computers, so you
could connect to the rest of your network. You could run ICS in
the computer with two network interfaces. (The only reason I'm
even mentioning this solution, is if large packet size turns out
to be advantageous in your first experiment, then perhaps ICS
will allow packets on either side of ICS to be different sizes ?
I somehow doubt that a cheap switch would allow that, but perhaps
the fragment bit handles all of that automatically, when packets
head for the Internet.)
Click to expand...

checking the ics link I see it doesn't cover xp. Just up to w2k.
Also it says that ICS is pretty much of a pain in the butt.

I hadn't thought far enough to realize how a 2nd nic would fit in but
now that you mentioned it ... maybe a 2nd nic in each for lan on 10/100 and
a wire between just those two on gigabit.

Can one direct traffic as one pleases per device? I'm thinking even
with 2 nics there is still the problem of directing specific traffic
to one or the other. Or is that what ICS does?

Anyone here have actual experience in setting something like this up.

I'd rather have a recipe to follow if possible.
 
(e-mail address removed) (Paul) writes:


[...]
A cheap solution, would be to expand that experiment, by putting
a 10/100 NIC card in one of the two gigabit computers, so you
could connect to the rest of your network. You could run ICS in
the computer with two network interfaces. (The only reason I'm
even mentioning this solution, is if large packet size turns out
to be advantageous in your first experiment, then perhaps ICS
will allow packets on either side of ICS to be different sizes ?
I somehow doubt that a cheap switch would allow that, but perhaps
the fragment bit handles all of that automatically, when packets
head for the Internet.)
Click to expand...

checking the ics link I see it doesn't cover xp. Just up to w2k.
Also it says that ICS is pretty much of a pain in the butt.

I hadn't thought far enough to realize how a 2nd nic would fit in but
now that you mentioned it ... maybe a 2nd nic in each for lan on 10/100 and
a wire between just those two on gigabit.

Can one direct traffic as one pleases per device? I'm thinking even
with 2 nics there is still the problem of directing specific traffic
to one or the other. Or is that what ICS does?

Anyone here have actual experience in setting something like this up.

I'd rather have a recipe to follow if possible.
Click to expand...

Traffic is routed by address, and what you propose, looks like
it has a loop in it. There would be two paths to get to the same
destination. To get from a node connected to the Netgear, there
are two paths to get to GbE #2. I would think cutting the loop
would be necessary, so the Gig switch would be a better solution.

Netgear
/ \
/ \
GbE #1 ------GbE #2

I've been looking for a tutorial on GbE networking, but haven't
found anything yet. Here is a paper comparing what happens when
the Gigabit Ethernet is on a 32 bit PCI bus or 64 bit PCI bus,
and also the effect of MTU (large packet 1500 to 9000 byte
packets - aka jumbo frames). This will save on doing the
experiments. Your P4C800-E is ideally equipped for GbE
(266MB/sec CSA bus), but the K8V SE will let you down to some
extent, due to the PCI bus.

http://www.cs.uni.edu/~gray/gig-over-copper/hsln-lcn.ps

I find it interesting how the Linux drivers find differences
when playing with the above mentioned hardware parameters,
whereas the Win2K drivers make all that tweaking useless.
What that does mean, is if you are using Windows for the
computers, you don't have to worry about buying a GbE
switch with jumbo frame capability, as it just wouldn't buy
you anything.

This product review doesn't suggest there is any setup to
worry about. Too bad the author never considered using
RAM Disks at either end of the link for speed testing.
It would be nice to factor the storage system out for
benching, so you know how much potential GbE offers.

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/networking/Linksys_EG008W_1.html

Someone gets 36MB/sec transfer to disk here:
http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=17036

What I've concluded so far, is GbE is so low tech, it isn't
deserving of any web articles/reviews :-) Maybe my search
terms aren't working...

Paul
 
[...] snipped interesting discussion and tips/urls
What I've concluded so far, is GbE is so low tech, it isn't
deserving of any web articles/reviews :-) Maybe my search
terms aren't working...
Click to expand...

I was wondering if that might not be the case too...

I asked a similar question on a Canopus forum. A video editing and
hardware co. (where I suspected some of the participants might be
using gigabit setups). One fellow replied who is using it and
indicates it is pretty simple. According to him you can just insert a
cheap gigabit switch for the two machines to talk thru and connect a
10/100 router or whatever to it.

(Canopus forums seems to be down just now but the url is:
http://forum.canopus.com/
On the main list of forums, choose `The pit' and look for a subject
line about gigabit stuff if you want to see the reply.)

But as I understood, it would look like this:

INTERNET
|
DSL Modem
|
Netgear router
| | |
mch1 | mch2
|
GIGABIT SWITCH
| |
Giga nic giga nic
mch3 mch4

I've responded to him asking if above is what he has but haven't seen
a reply yet.
Click to expand...
 
[...] snipped interesting discussion and tips/urls
What I've concluded so far, is GbE is so low tech, it isn't
deserving of any web articles/reviews :-) Maybe my search
terms aren't working...
Click to expand...

I was wondering if that might not be the case too...

I asked a similar question on a Canopus forum. A video editing and
hardware co. (where I suspected some of the participants might be
using gigabit setups). One fellow replied who is using it and
indicates it is pretty simple. According to him you can just insert a
cheap gigabit switch for the two machines to talk thru and connect a
10/100 router or whatever to it.

(Canopus forums seems to be down just now but the url is:
http://forum.canopus.com/
On the main list of forums, choose `The pit' and look for a subject
line about gigabit stuff if you want to see the reply.)

But as I understood, it would look like this:

INTERNET
|
DSL Modem
|
Netgear router
| | |
mch1 | mch2
|
GIGABIT SWITCH
| |
Giga nic giga nic
mch3 mch4

I've responded to him asking if above is what he has but haven't seen
a reply yet.
Click to expand...

If Windows is being used on the gigabit machines, then that would
seem to be the right way to connect them. No need to modify the MTU
and no need to worry about jumbo frames support (larger than 1500 byte
packets). Let the experiments begin...

Paul
Click to expand...
 
The cheap switches that I have seen don't care about loops and will pick one
link as a primary to route all the traffic.

Paul said:
(e-mail address removed) (Paul) writes:


[...]
A cheap solution, would be to expand that experiment, by putting
a 10/100 NIC card in one of the two gigabit computers, so you
could connect to the rest of your network. You could run ICS in
the computer with two network interfaces. (The only reason I'm
even mentioning this solution, is if large packet size turns out
to be advantageous in your first experiment, then perhaps ICS
will allow packets on either side of ICS to be different sizes ?
I somehow doubt that a cheap switch would allow that, but perhaps
the fragment bit handles all of that automatically, when packets
head for the Internet.)
Click to expand...

checking the ics link I see it doesn't cover xp. Just up to w2k.
Also it says that ICS is pretty much of a pain in the butt.

I hadn't thought far enough to realize how a 2nd nic would fit in but
now that you mentioned it ... maybe a 2nd nic in each for lan on 10/100
and
a wire between just those two on gigabit.

Can one direct traffic as one pleases per device? I'm thinking even
with 2 nics there is still the problem of directing specific traffic
to one or the other. Or is that what ICS does?

Anyone here have actual experience in setting something like this up.

I'd rather have a recipe to follow if possible.
Click to expand...

Traffic is routed by address, and what you propose, looks like
it has a loop in it. There would be two paths to get to the same
destination. To get from a node connected to the Netgear, there
are two paths to get to GbE #2. I would think cutting the loop
would be necessary, so the Gig switch would be a better solution.

Netgear
/ \
/ \
GbE #1 ------GbE #2

I've been looking for a tutorial on GbE networking, but haven't
found anything yet. Here is a paper comparing what happens when
the Gigabit Ethernet is on a 32 bit PCI bus or 64 bit PCI bus,
and also the effect of MTU (large packet 1500 to 9000 byte
packets - aka jumbo frames). This will save on doing the
experiments. Your P4C800-E is ideally equipped for GbE
(266MB/sec CSA bus), but the K8V SE will let you down to some
extent, due to the PCI bus.

http://www.cs.uni.edu/~gray/gig-over-copper/hsln-lcn.ps

I find it interesting how the Linux drivers find differences
when playing with the above mentioned hardware parameters,
whereas the Win2K drivers make all that tweaking useless.
What that does mean, is if you are using Windows for the
computers, you don't have to worry about buying a GbE
switch with jumbo frame capability, as it just wouldn't buy
you anything.

This product review doesn't suggest there is any setup to
worry about. Too bad the author never considered using
RAM Disks at either end of the link for speed testing.
It would be nice to factor the storage system out for
benching, so you know how much potential GbE offers.

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/networking/Linksys_EG008W_1.html

Someone gets 36MB/sec transfer to disk here:
http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=17036

What I've concluded so far, is GbE is so low tech, it isn't
deserving of any web articles/reviews :-) Maybe my search
terms aren't working...

Paul
Click to expand...
 
Pete D said:
The cheap switches that I have seen don't care about loops and will pick one
link as a primary to route all the traffic.
Click to expand...

Any idea how the `picking' takes place?
 
(e-mail address removed) (Paul) writes:


[...]
Traffic is routed by address, and what you propose, looks like
it has a loop in it. There would be two paths to get to the same
destination. To get from a node connected to the Netgear, there
are two paths to get to GbE #2. I would think cutting the loop
would be necessary, so the Gig switch would be a better solution.

Netgear
/ \
/ \
GbE #1 ------GbE #2

I've been looking for a tutorial on GbE networking, but haven't
found anything yet. Here is a paper comparing what happens when
the Gigabit Ethernet is on a 32 bit PCI bus or 64 bit PCI bus,
and also the effect of MTU (large packet 1500 to 9000 byte
packets - aka jumbo frames). This will save on doing the
experiments. Your P4C800-E is ideally equipped for GbE
(266MB/sec CSA bus), but the K8V SE will let you down to some
extent, due to the PCI bus.

http://www.cs.uni.edu/~gray/gig-over-copper/hsln-lcn.ps

[...]

What I've concluded so far, is GbE is so low tech, it isn't
deserving of any web articles/reviews :-) Maybe my search
terms aren't working...
Click to expand...

Maybe not, in fact the url you posted
http://www.cs.uni.edu/~gray/gig-over-copper/hsln-lcn.ps
Indicates its quite a serious problem getting good performance from a
gigabit lan setup.
 
I have one mobo with gigabit lan (K8V SE) and am about to setup
another machine with the gigabit cabability....also asus but
P4C800E-Deluxe.

I've never used gigabit lan but do have the adaptor on K8V working as
regular 10/100 with my gateway (A Netgear FVS318 router/firewall).
This is on a home setup with DSL Internet access.

Once I get the new machine setup in the lan I'm going to want to use
the gigabit speed between those two machines. Both are equiped for
video editing and will need to share massive video files measuring in
10s of Gb.

I'm sort of lost as to how to set this up. I guess I'll need a hub
that also talks gigabit?. My four home machines could be Something
like this simple diagram:

[INTERNET]
|
DSL modem
|
Netgear router/firewall (FVS318.. not gigabit)
| | |
10/100 | | | 10/100
MCH1 | MCH2
|
| 10/100
GIGABIT capable hub
| |
Gigabit GIGABIT
MCH3 MCH4

That is, an extra hub to pass the gigabit traffic between the two
Gigabit capable machines but it speaks 10/100 on the upstream side.

Or am I really over complicating this? Can these gigabit adapters
talk to each other in giga but to the rest of the network in 10/100?
Click to expand...

It seems to me you guys are overly complicating this discussion.

I have 4 devices in my network, 1 is an older PC with only 10/100, one
is a GPS clock with 10 meg only and 2 PCs have gig ports on the
motherboard.

My cable modem connects to the WAN port on my Zyxel router. The
router has a 4 port switch but I only use one port to connect to my
Netgear GS-108 switch where all devices plug in.

All PCs use DHCP from the router except the clock which is manually
assigned a 192.168.1.50 IP and the router hands out IPs in the
192.168.1.32/28 range.

Everything happily talks to the Internet and to each other at whatever
the highest speeds the devices can support. The 2 PCs with gig speed
can talk to each other at high speeds and I regularly send video files
back and forth at far higher speeds then when I only had a 10/100
switch. When they talk to the older PC, it's only at 100 meg and then
the old clock can only manage 10. The GS-108 switch works fine with
all of them as it's supposed to. The switch only cost about $100 so
we are not talking lots of money here.

So, plug your Netgear router into the gig switch, everything else into
the switch and you are done. The switch takes care of the speed
differences, that's what the switch is for. All run full duplex on my
net but the clock which is only 10 half. The switch is designed to
connect 10/100/1000 devices together.

TCP/IP is designed to flow the traffic as fast as it sees the acks
coming back. The GS-108 does not handle jumbo frames but I don't
really care. The speed is many times greater then is was before I
took out my 10/100 meg switch. I did nothing to Win XP for this, MTU
is still at 1500.
 
crypto said:
It seems to me you guys are overly complicating this discussion.

I have 4 devices in my network, 1 is an older PC with only 10/100, one
is a GPS clock with 10 meg only and 2 PCs have gig ports on the
motherboard.
Click to expand...

[...]

Thanks for the confirmation... I had found that out from one of the
video forums too. Nice to here it really that easy.
 
Harry Putnam <[email protected]> said:
crypto said:
It seems to me you guys are overly complicating this discussion.

I have 4 devices in my network, 1 is an older PC with only 10/100, one
is a GPS clock with 10 meg only and 2 PCs have gig ports on the
motherboard.
Click to expand...

[...]

Thanks for the confirmation... I had found that out from one of the
video forums too. Nice to here it really that easy.
Click to expand...

I did a test tonight, using the ICS configuration

10bt 100bt 1Gbit/sec
ADSL------LinksysRouter-------A7N8X-E--------------------P4C800-E
Marvell PCI Intel (CSA bus)
GbE 88E8001 GbE 82547EI

I ran an FTPD on the A7N8X-E. Enabled ICS on the A7N8X-E.
I can surf from the P4C800-E to the Internet.

I set up two 115MB software ramdisks, using the free ramdisk from
arsoft in Germany. The program claims to support up to 2GB ramdisks,
but the best I could do is about 120MB, before drivers stopped loading,
and in one case, the registry claimed to be corrupted. There is some
kind of address space or resource issue, but I cannot find any comments
in Google concerning fixing it.

I set up a 100MB file on the A7N8X-E ramdisk and pulled it to the
P4C800-E. The transfer rate was 20MB sec. I then renamed the file
on the P4C800-E, erased the test file on the A7N8X-E, and pushed
the file back to the A7N8X-E. Transfer rate in this case was
46.1MB/sec. I doubt if I used hard drives as the target, that I
could get similar transfer rates.

OS used on the test machines is Win2K SP2.

If you are using this for real transfers, there could be a 2GB
file size limit. I didn't try testing the max file transfer size.

The reason I didn't test using file sharing, is the
practicallynetworking web site claimed neither machine above
could be a domain controller, so I doubt I could set up
sharing. That would be an advantage of using a GbE switch
configuration instead. (Sharing is another function I've
never got working.)

HTH,
Paul
 
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