GigE router or isolated switch?

[MacDaddy]

O great collective wisdom of Sage gurus - which is the better option: To GigE or not to GigE?

I have an existing wireless router with 100Mb hardwired ports. I have a HDHomeRun tuner network attached and my Sage system serving file space to two other clients. I've noticed a little stutter on live HD shows coming from the HDHR when everything starts going heavy amongst all the clients. The router shows the link is starting to get saturated. The Sage box is loafing on CPU utilization, so I'm thinking that network I/O is the culprit.

I'm thinking of two general options:
1) Get a 100Mb switch and place Sage and HDHR on it in isolation with an uplink to the router and other clients. HDHR gets a clear channel to talk to Sage and the router handles the client contention.

2) Get a 1Gb router and leave the topology as is. More bandwidth for everyone (although the HDHR and one client will still talk 100Mb).

Any advice before I start stomping about?

[bznotins]

FWIW, I have the D-Link DGL-4300 and love it. I tend to favour "all in one" solutions so the fact that a gigabit switch is integrated was the primary selling feature.

[KarylFStein]

I have the DGL-4300 as well and like it. One feature with that router is you can assign traffic priority rules (QoS, but they call it GameFuel). So, you could for instance plug the HDHR in and say that traffic from that IP gets top priority.

What I do is plug my "high priority" items into the router and then feed a gig switch as well.

I'm not a network expert, so can't really say technically what's best. However, if you want to get rid of any possibility of network issues between the HDHR and your Sage server, just put another network card in the server and have the HDHR plug into that directly, (or through a 100 switch if you plan to add more HDHRs). That means you'd have to run a DHCP server on your server, but there are free options for that and it doesn't take up any resources really. You could probably get that for hardly any money.

[src666]

If the router has enough ports for all of your devices, then great. Once you get beyond that, go for a good GigE switch and put all of your devices on the switch. The big thing is that you don't want your intra-device traffic to cross the interface between two switches if it can be avoided.

If you split your devices between switches, then ALL devices trying to cross the boundary share a single cable, which can create bottlenecks and contention.

It's obviously not as big a deal in a home as opposed to a business, but we are all pumping video data over that wire, so go with best practices if you can.

[MacDaddy]

Thanks for the advice. I think I've seen the 4300 in Tom's Hardware before so I'll have to read up. It's a good excuse for a new toy.

[bcjenkins]

you could also add a second nic to your server and do a direct connect to the HDHR.

b

[paulbeers]

I have a Trendnet Mimo router with 100 mb ethernet that runs to my 26 port hub that has 24 ports of 10/100 and 2 gigabit ports. My servers are hooked into the gigabit ports and all clients are to the 100 mb ports. Clients do not need anymore than 100 mb, but your servers theoretically could.

Edit: I personally think routers with gigabit ports are a waste of money. Everytime it needs to be replaced, you will have to spend the extra cash for one of the few gigabit routers. Don't forget that your broadband connection (dsl or cable) are considerably slower than even 100mb speeds. I like to replace my router every 2 years for some of the latest and greatest "stuff" and having to spend an extra 50 bucks every time when a cheap gigabit 5 port router can be had for less than 30? Doesn't make a lot of sense.

[bznotins]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Edit: I personally think routers with gigabit ports are a waste of money. Everytime it needs to be replaced, you will have to spend the extra cash for one of the few gigabit routers. Don't forget that your broadband connection (dsl or cable) are considerably slower than even 100mb speeds. I like to replace my router every 2 years for some of the latest and greatest "stuff" and having to spend an extra 50 bucks every time when a cheap gigabit 5 port router can be had for less than 30? Doesn't make a lot of sense.

It's only been a few months that gigabit switches have been less than $30. And even now they're not all that common.

Having the gigabit router means I don't need to add a switch anywhere in the system unless I'm having a lan party. Less devices = better in my books. And I've had my DGL-4300 for almost two years now and there's still not a viable all-in-one (QoS, Gigabit, 802.11g) replacement out there at a substantially reduced price from what I paid ($100).

To each their own.

[Yooper]

Last summer I rewired my house and installed CAT6 cable and a gigabit network into every room where only telephone and cable existed before. I also have wireless.

A lot of people said I was wasting time and money installing the new cable since I already have wireless.

However, I can transfer a file from either my video server or file server in a few seconds via the cable, when it would take a lot longer by wireless.

I use a computer as my gateway router - running on FreeBSD. Everything else must be switches. The wireless units must also be access points, not routers, with this configuration. If I put a wireless router into my system, then I cannot send documents to my networked printer via the wireless.

[sandor]

i have a d-link DIR-655 (802.11 n and 4 port gig-e router)

it works like a dream, i can sustain over 40 MB/s between my Sage server and my NasLite home-built nas (3.2 ghz P4 running with 4 SATA 500 GB drives).

The bigger surprise is that i can sustain about 6 MB/s vis wifi with 802.11 n and peak around 12 MB/s. my old linksys could only sustain about 1.2 MB/s.

I've got a spare netgear gig-e switch if i ever need more than 4 ports (currently one for the server, one for the HDHR and one for the nas) but i was able to take my clients off the wired network thanks to the surprising performance of 802.11 n in my setup (live OTA HD streams with no problem)

[src666]

One last tip - if you buy a GigE switch, make sure that it supports Jumbo Frames. This allows you to burst larger blocks of data in a single transmission, which cuts overhead drastically.

[stevech]

I have a $30 gigE switch. And a venerable WRT54G wireless router.

I kind of like keeping all the video transfer bulk off the WRT.

A problem with the all-in-one wireless router + switch is that the cables to the switch part make it hard to place the wireless part optimally -in terms of antenna location. I guess that's why they make access points.

[sandor]

Originally Posted by stevech

I have a $30 gigE switch. And a venerable WRT54G wireless router.

I kind of like keeping all the video transfer bulk off the WRT.

A problem with the all-in-one wireless router + switch is that the cables to the switch part make it hard to place the wireless part optimally -in terms of antenna location. I guess that's why they make access points.

thats where i got lucky -->
1) i have 100 m sq to cover
2) the best place for the wireless router is also the best place to run the hardwired cat 5e



i think the biggest surprise to me is the ability of the dlink 655 in terms of 802.11 n. just did a brief test yesterday, and copied a sage recording (approx 6 GB) over wireless to my macbook in the farthest reach of my place, averaged over 8 MB/s and peaked at 12 MB/s. the same test with my WRT54G yielded average of 1.2 MB/s with a peak of 1.9 MB/s

the wired gigE is simply what i expect - to be limited by the speed of the disks rather than the network.

[kevine]

I got a quick question for all you network experts here. Here is my topology:

Internet >> Wireless 54G router >> 8 port switch >> 8 port switch
Currently everything 100Mbps

My server is connected to last switch along with 2 out of 4 client MVPs.
If I use Cat6 cable (do I need Cat6?), and replaced just the last switch will those 2 MVPs benefit?

As well, my server has 2 GigE ports on the MB. How do I configure the server to use both equally and to my best advantage?

Thanks.

Edit: Also, as I understand it, a router splits its bandwidth between all connected ports where a switch does not. Correct me if I am wrong.

[phelme]

Routers decide where the packets go if the connected devices can't see each other directly, i.e. aren't on the same local network like 192.168.0.x etc. Most home networks only use the router to get to the Internet, everything else can be seen on the same local wiring so packets don't have to go through the router. In essence you could keep an existing 10/100 router and only connect it to your WAN (cable, DSL etc.), a new gigabit switch and nothing else and be fine. Disconnect everything else from the router and put it on the gigabit switch. All the stuff on your local network will just go through the switch(es) for local traffic.

Switches have enough intelligence to send packets through only the ports that are necessary, while hubs blast all packets to all ports all the time.

If you have Cat 5e, you're fine with gigabit Ethernet. Gigabit switches are so cheap there is no excuse not to use them anymore. And don't be fooled by 100 Mbps switches, they'll start to overload at around 33 Mbps of continuous traffic. if you're sending multiple HD streams (roughly 9 - 18 Mbps compressed) around the house simultaneously on the same LAN, you'll find this out rather quickly.

[kevine]

Originally Posted by phelme

Routers decide where the packets go if the connected devices can't see each other directly, i.e. aren't on the same local network like 192.168.0.x etc. Most home networks only use the router to get to the Internet, everything else can be seen on the same local wiring so packets don't have to go through the router. In essence you could keep an existing 10/100 router and only connect it to your WAN (cable, DSL etc.), a new gigabit switch and nothing else and be fine. Disconnect everything else from the router and put it on the gigabit switch. All the stuff on your local network will just go through the switch(es) for local traffic.

Switches have enough intelligence to send packets through only the ports that are necessary, while hubs blast all packets to all ports all the time.

If you have Cat 5e, you're fine with gigabit Ethernet. Gigabit switches are so cheap there is no excuse not to use them anymore. And don't be fooled by 100 Mbps switches, they'll start to overload at around 33 Mbps of continuous traffic. if you're sending multiple HD streams (roughly 9 - 18 Mbps compressed) around the house simultaneously on the same LAN, you'll find this out rather quickly.

Great info. Thanks!

[omega]

FWIW, I have my SageTV server, HD client/personal workstation, MediaMVP and HDHR all on one GbE segment (5-port Netgear switch), with an uplink to my WRT54GL router, and I've never had any network problems even when recording 2 simultaneous HD streams, watching an SD recording on the MVP, monitoring the server from the workstation with VNC, and surfing the Internet.

IMHO, switched GbE should be good enough for all but the most demanding SageTV users. A dedicated NIC for the HDHR is fine if you already have a second NIC and want to setup a DHCP server, but it shouldn't really be necessary. The only thing I personally would probably want a dedicated NIC for would be if I were to move my RAID array to an external NAS device.