faster around the network

[Penfold]

I have one of these switches - which I can see is a 100mb switch. to move stuff fast around my network do all I need to do is buy a gigabet switch? Is this one the next version up (not sure what managed vs unmanaged means and which I'd want)? (I can just about get away with an 8-port I guess). OR does anyone have a better alternative

How does one tell whether the network card in a machine is 100mb one or a gigabit one please?

If they're only 100mb ones presumably I can just buy gigbait pci cards?

Finally, is there something else I'm missing or should be doing (am I too far behind the times ).

Thanks

[Benny]

How do you know if you are swamping your capacity?

It's worth checking where the bottleneck is before splashing out, but to answer your questions, go tot he settings and look to change the speed/duplex under the advanced adapter settings, yes and yes.

[Tutonic]

If all you're doing is punting data around for a few PC's, you don't need a managed switch.

[Penfold]

Benny.... I have got a clue what you're talking about... sorry.

What happens is that I regularly transfer data (about 100gb) between machines on the network and it takes forever.

I don't know about swamping and bottlenecks (sry).

All I'm doing is copying from one PC to 3 others in the main

PC -> switch -> PC -> PC -> PC
                   

I just want it to be a little quicker

[Tutonic]

What's your budget Pen?

If you want really fast speeds fibre-optic is the way to go but it's fiddly, fragile and will be expensive.

[Benny]

Are the PC's next to each other?

The quick test is to connect them back to back and see how fast it is. Have you checked the properties on the cards?

control panel, network, select the card and look at the advanced properties. Give me a shout tomorrow if you get stuck and I can talk you through it....possibly

[Penfold]

Budget as little as possible

Connecting them back-to-back may be a solution. I'll have a look at the cards and if I can't make head nor tail of it may give you a shout if that's Ok.

Thanks

[T-Bag]

Are the PC's next to each other?

The quick test is to connect them back to back and see how fast it is. Have you checked the properties on the cards?

control panel, network, select the card and look at the advanced properties. Give me a shout tomorrow if you get stuck and I can talk you through it....possibly

Yup, all gigabit automatically do cross-over (before that you had to get a special cable if you weren't using a hub/router), you should see a huge jump in speed vs 100mb if you use a Cat5e (possibly what you have already) cable less than a few meters. If it's fast then all you have to do is upgrade the router. If it doesn't increase you'll need a card to bring it up to gigabit for one if not both machines (modern motherboards have had gigabit for a while so fit to older machines first and repeat the test before buying a second card).

[Gandalf]

Cheap as chips gigabit network (this is what I have at home)

NETGEAR 5 Port 10/100/1000 Gigabit Unmanaged Desktop Switch

Or if you need more ports... NETGEAR 8 Port 10/100/1000 Gigabit Compact Switch

Category 6 Cables of varying lengths.

Job done

Oh and NIC's if you need... http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=1079&

For PCI, I'd go for this Intel PRO/1000 GT Desktop Adapter

[Penfold]

Great, thanks

Do I need to use cat6 cables. Will cat5e cables not work? (It's an integrated system - i.e. I have switch terminals and the cabling runs through the roof).

[Gandalf]

If it's good quality cable, installed well with short runs then you should be ok. Though for best performance cat6 is what you need.

However, I'm running a gigabit network here on standard cat5 cable and it does work ok. I don't get max speed all the time but it is a lot faster than 100mb

[Penfold]

Thanks.

I'm off shopping.

One quick question though which I think Benny answered but I don't understand is how one tells what type of network card (speedwise) one has currently in Desktop and Laptop.

Thanks

[Gandalf]

if you do ipconfig /all from a command prompt you may be lucky enough to have that info as the description.

Code Select Expand

Ethernet adapter Primary:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : [B][COLOR=Red]Realtek RTL8168C(P)/8111C(P) Family PCI-E
 Gigabit Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.20)[/COLOR][/B]
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
   IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.10.10(Preferred)
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.10.1
   DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.10.8
   NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled
If not, right click Computer, then select Manage. Click Device Manager, expand network adapters and check the model names in there. You can double click on one and then click the advanced tab and in there among the many options (all driver specific so may vary) should be a Speed & Duplex option. Look at the values in there, if you have 1Gbps listed you're good

[smilodon]

Great, thanks

Do I need to use cat6 cables. Will cat5e cables not work? (It's an integrated system - i.e. I have switch terminals and the cabling runs through the roof).

If it gets to the point where you have to replace the cables give me a shout. I know a bloke who can do that at a very reasonable price.

[BrotherTobious]

Hell if it comes to that mate, give me a shout I will do it for 2 bacons sarnies and some tea