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Network Performance Issue

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by djehan

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Apologies if this is not the right forum, but I have a question on network performance. We have just upgraded our cabling from nasty old coax to spanking new CAT5. We have a couple of small 16 port 10/100 auto-sensing hubs in place. Our site is linked to 3 others via ISDN, which also carries our telephone data between sites (not VOIP). The link between us and each site is approx 512K. My question is this: Do I upgrade the NIC's to 10/100 (as opposed 10 Base T combo's), or put switches in place?
Once is going to cost a couple of hundred, one is going to cost a few thousand. I don't mind spending the money - but I need to be sure of the benefits first.

Any thoughts gratefully received

9 replies

by jeff finney

I hate to be cryptic when answering a question. However, you will have to make a business decision based on the number of people at the site verses the benifit of 100Mb network.

I can say that I can tell a huge difference between 10 and 100Mb. I recently lost my 100 Mb network connection and was put on a 10 Mb switched port. Performance is not as good to the servers. I would atleast suggest putting in 100 Mb network connections for the servers. This will speed up your backups dramatically. I do not know how much data you have to backup.

We backup 40 GB from one server every night with a full image. We have about 15 different servers on site. This was the major business decision for us.

Hope this helps. If not send me an email at finneyjw@bp.com

by brainiac

Switches will give better performance in that they create a virtual connection between two computers as opposed to hubs sharing the link. For example, if you have a 100 base hub with 16 ports and all ports are active each user will have approx. 6.25 mb/sec bandwidth. With a 100 base switch each user will have 100 mb/sec dedicated. Today, the cost difference between switches and hubs are minimal. I'd check around some more for pricing. Switches also give you the base infrastructure needed ifyou decide to go VOIP across your ISDN in the future whereas hubs do not. Overall, switches will give better performance and leave you will more options in the future than hubs.

by tmaclennan

Here's an answer from the other side. Unless you are transmitting very large amounts of data continuously in each local area, you will get little performance benefit from upgrading either the hubs or the NICS. Your big bottleneck is going to be your.5M connection between remote sites, and any communication between sites will go no faster than that link. If you are doing only file and print services, and not backing up across the network, I would recommend replacing your NICs as you see a need,first the server(s), then any high-use workstations. BTW, replacing just the server NIC and not changing the hub to a switch will give you zero performance advantage.

by c. hilbrandt

I just want to make sure that you are positive of you ISDN link speed. 1 ISDN generally gives you 2 64K channels. With that said, I would definately put the servers on 100 Mb backbone (switched preferably). If you're not seeing a lot of collisions and your level of broadcasts isn't too high (you can get this data if your hubs are managable via snmp), shared 100Mb media would probably be O.K. You need to look at where most of your traffic is destined to make a real good decision. Hope this helps........

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