Would I benefit from a gigabit network switch?

Tetrad · Post by **Tetrad** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 3:21 pm

I have two computers, my file server and my main computer, both with intel 10/100/1000 NICs. A file transfer from my server with 7200 rpm ide drives puts out about 85% of my total network bandwidth on a 100mbit switch according to the windows internal network monitor thingie. If I try transfers from two different drives it goes up to around 90-95%.

Now would there be a noticable increase in file transfer speed if I go gigabit? How fast can I expect file transfers to go from one computer to another given normal IDE drives? Would I be looking at other limitations such as the PCI bus?

Tricord · Post by **Tricord** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 3:59 pm

Even if it's not much faster, it's a lot cooler

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 4:37 pm

If both PC's are using 1000, then you are limiting your speed by the current 100Mbit switch/Router. To to take full advantage of the speed, you need a gigaswitch for your PC's to plug into then plug your router into the switch.

Tetrad · Post by **Tetrad** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:03 pm

cdn_merlin wrote:If both PC's are using 1000, then you are limiting your speed by the current 100Mbit switch/Router. To to take full advantage of the speed, you need a gigaswitch for your PC's to plug into then plug your router into the switch.

I know that. I was asking if it was worth the additional cost to upgrade my switch from 100mbit to 1gb.

And for what it's worth, my router IS my server.

Tetrad · Post by **Tetrad** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:10 pm

Xciter wrote:Real world transfer speeds under Windows on Gigabit is about 35-40Mb/s... I doubt the single IDE drive will be able to write that fast.

I just did a simple file transfer benchmark on one of my other drives. Does 20 megs/sec sound about right for an IDE write speed? That would be 160mbit/sec, which is around double the 85mbit transfers I was getting before.

Don't know if I want to pay over a hundred bucks for that increase though.

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:43 pm

not worth it if you ask me, your not using anything near that kind of bandwidth

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:53 pm

Keep in mind that both gigabit switches (look at netgears) and gigabit NICs are getting much more affordible now, and many new motherboards and chipsets come with intigrated gigabit LAN.

Also keep in mind that [spoiler][Xciter is a 15k RPM scsi whore and][/spoiler] modern IDE drives can hold 30-50 MB/sec write speeds depending on where on the disk you are and the level of fragmentation. While this is a far cry from the 125 MB/sec I have heard for transfer rates over gigabit, it totally blows away the 8-10 MB/sec maximum you get on 100Mbit.

I'd go with gigabit and more ports then you need for a while just so you will not have to upgrade your network hardware again for a long time.

-Krom

Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:58 pm

Ace shut up

Tetrad im running a Gigabit my 2 comps and my server all have cards and its amazing how fast it is.

going from one ata100 to another ata100 with a 1.7gb file across the gigabit is so damn fast it onley takes 45secs for that file to copy vs 10min.

it onley cost me about $230 to do 2 nics and 1 8 port switch my comp allready had a giga nic on it.

onley down side all your cables that goes to the giga cards tot he switch need to be Cat5e or Cat6, Cat5 will work but some time the files will get croupted but 5e+ it doesnt do it.

this is what all i got

the nics
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 120&depa=0

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDe ... 020&depa=0
the switch has a fan in it and people ★■◆● about it being to loude its all BS, my psu is alot louder than the fan in that switch is.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 8:13 pm

Actually X, modern IDE drives are better then you think. Having 7200 RPMs and up to 100 GB per platter lets you get away with pretty high write speeds (again, depending on fragmentation, dont defrag and you get nothing from both SCSI or IDE). Both of my drives have only 40 GB per platter times 3 platters, but they still hawl ass on the outer edges of the disk.

http://www4.tomshardware.com/storage/20 ... index.html
Transfer rates:
Reading @ 34.3 MB/sec minimum, 64.1 MB/sec maximum, 52.1 MB/sec average.
Writing @ 32.8 MB/sec minimum, 63.7 MB/sec maximum, 49.3 MB/sec average.

Believe it or not, the interface makes virtually no difference in the overall drive performance these days. SCSI is too expensive, makes little or no difference, is not any more reliable then IDE, and the actual drive hardware is not any different or faster then its IDE counterparts at the same rotation speeds.

-Krom

Tetrad · Post by **Tetrad** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 8:40 pm

Xciter wrote:or want to stream video across your network, sure...

That's basically the only thing I use my network for.

Capm · Post by **Capm** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 9:05 pm

On the Other hand...

I've been looking at prices lately, thinking about replacing my equipment with gigabit... This clenched it for me:

http://www.pcnation.com/web/details.asp ... tem=794148

$117 bux w/shipping makes it affordable. I'd say go for it. Whether or not you use it now, you'll be ready for when you do.

Vertigo · Post by **Vertigo** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 9:50 pm

Xciter.... for a regular desktop system, no serving at all, i don't think there's much speed noticable difference between a 15K SCSI disk and a 10K WD740 Raptor, right ?

Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 10:08 pm

Xciter u still hit close to it cause its buffers most of the data to the ram cause here when its done transfering the file the drive is still copying

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 10:42 pm

X, on those 1700 desktop IDE computers, do they turn off or spin down the drives at any time compared to those SCSI drives? Also, do the servers sit in a cooled and locked room forever?

[]
SCSI has command queueing, domain validation, etc... [/]
And what exactly do these options that exist in the drive firmware/interface level (and can be implemented on Serial ATA) have to do with the reliability and performance of the hardware?

[]
Even the SATA Raptors get buried under loads where SCSI shines.
[/]
The Raptor is reasonably good at keeping up with other 10,000 RPM drives, but you throw a couple current generation 15k RPM drives at it, of course they are going to perform better. Also the fact that most Serial ATA controllers lack the command queuing support puts the Raptor at a disadvantage in I/Os per second, plus the fact that the interface is slower then a single drive on U320 SCSI, and toss in the fact that the raptors firmware is optimized differently you cant really base any saying that the hardware is fundamentally different. That and you must think of Raptors as credible drives or else you would not Capitalize the first letter when you type it.

[]
Not to forget about how many devices SCSI can hold compared to an IDE chain... and cable length.
[/]
Just because you can stick 15 drives on one cable, doesnâ??t mean that you should stick 15 drives on one cable. Try it and there goes that 320 MB/sec interface performance advantage over a single drive configuration. Serial ATA cables can be 1 meter long.

You get what you pay for yes, get the cheapest IDE drives and pay ground shipping on them, you will be lucky if they even work out of the box after the shippers get done beating them. If you only got 3 IDE drives, and 2 failed, I would say; get your drives from someplace else.

I have IDE drives going on 4 years old with most of that being spent actually spinning and they are still working fine. I have not had a hard drive failure yet because I replace them often enough when I need more capacity, but do I keep up to date backups; hell yes, if I have something important on hard drives, and it isnâ??t burned to a CD or DVD yet, odds are its on 2 or more drives and probably in separate computers. Would my "keep backups" policy change if I had SCSI drives instead; hell no, thatâ??s just asking for a total failure and data loss.

This is not to say I have never seen a hard drive fail, I have seen the death of IDE drives less then 1 year old (and still under warranty). I have seen total sudden death of the drive from seemingly perfect health or slowly developing bad clusters. Luckily it wasnâ??t one of mine.

Seriously, SCSI might be good and all, but we are talking home users, its way overrated here. I seriously doubt that you will burn a quality IDE drive any faster then a SCSI drive if you put it through the same start stop cycle abuse and cram them into the same desktop case/temperature. I get your angle coming from corporate/enterprise level work, I would recommend SCSI there also. Actually, the server I set up for the local city is a Dell Poweredge with 10k RPM SCSIs in RAID1 and we are getting an autoloader tape backup for it.

Getting into a argument with the Reigning Grand Pubah bad idea!

-Krom

STRESSTEST · Post by **STRESSTEST** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 11:12 pm

hahahah dont ask me to moderate this one.. It's the farging admin for JFC's sake!

GET EM JIM!!!

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 11:17 pm

Oh yeah, something else to keep in mind, you pay $1000 for a SCSI drive, the bearings are going to be bigger and better, the actuator is going to be stronger, the motor is going to be better, and most importantly, the fault tollerance at the factory will be MUCH tighter. They use better parts when you spit up all this extra cash for these drives, they damn well should be built better. However, the underlying technoligy is identical to that of a 89 cents per gigabyte special. If someone bothered to make a IDE drive with the same care in parts and hardware - just a different interface - it would be just as reliable (and probably as expensive) as a matching SCSI drive.

You get what you pay for, you buy crap IDE drives at the lowest cost possible, and they are going to have low cost crap parts in them. Just like a $500 dollar PC is not going to hold a stability candle to a $100,000 dollar mainframe. Its the same underlying technoligy (transistors, silicone, semiconductors, circut boards, capacitors, etc.), just they used crap parts, cheap labor, and the most inexpensive stuff possible to build the $500 dollar PC.

Like I said, the interface has nothing to do with the reliability of a drive. How much it costs has more then a little bit to do with how reliable it is. SCSI doesnt cost more because it is more reliable, it is more reliable because it costs more.

-Krom

Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Tue Mar 23, 2004 11:57 pm

and krom lays the smack down

bash · Post by **bash** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 8:10 am

I have been a long-time SCSI user and never in almost twenty years had a drive go bad/lose data. I still have an old external 1 gig Sun drive the size of a bread box that works perfectly. That said, I've recently abandoned SCSI for SATA just because my current box (a Shuttle XPC) only has one PCI slot and I needed that for a VIVO card.

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 8:16 am

Im just going to wait for SAS for performance drives, until then SATA will do and IDE for cheap storage

But SAS (Serial attached SCSI) with 3Gbps transfer rates has me all moist!

Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 8:42 am

well faster drive transsfer rates are kinda pointless untill they can get the bus speed up higher insted of doing this 200mhz bus running at 400mhz or 200 to 800 (Quad pumping).

To me thats just a cheep way to speed it up, they need to get them up to the 1ghz range with out haveing to hit it 2 times or 4 times perclock

and get rid on the slow 33mhz pci bus

STRESSTEST · Post by **STRESSTEST** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 9:37 am

I'll not be drug into this one Jim. I agree, that SCSI is hands down the only way to go. Not everyone can afford it tho.

My personal reason's for that tower of doom, since you ask, were:

Case was cheap (58 bucks)
Drives (12 total 8 in use) were only like 30 bucks on egay.
I wasn't concerned with the speed os the drives (they were seagate full height 47 gig drives) since they could more then match the 100mb network it was going to be placed on as a data depot.
but ultimately, it was for reliability. Those drives are only 5400 rpm if I remember right and last forever. Throw a redundant raid at them, and your golden.

BTW, I sold the whole thing to Klaymation

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:52 am

[]
If you need bulk storage... then IDE drives are fine... but they are not equal to SCSI in any way except for the physical size of the drive.
[/]

Prove it; donâ??t give us more explanations that have nothing to do with the actual subject (never mind the real original subject was gigabit LAN) and point to features that are all implemented on the interface not the actual drive hardware (motors, heads, actuators, spinning disks). All I really said was the interface has absolutely nothing to do with the true speed or the reliability of the drives.

What matters for the performance is how densely the data is packed on the platters, how fast the platters rotate, and how quickly the read/write heads can seek across the disk. Higher data density increases the read and write speeds, more data can pass under the heads in a single rotation. Higher rotation speed increases the read and write speeds again because the same amount of data can pass under the heads in less time, higher rotation speed decreases the access time on the drive because the read heads do not have to wait as long for a section of the disk to pass by.

Reliability is all about how well built the drives are, how well built the drives are is all about how expensive the drives are. If someone made an IDE drive as carefully as a SCSI drive, and to the same tolerances they would be just as reliable, and just as expensive. Youâ??re telling people that the interface makes a difference in the reliability of a hard drive is nothing but pure BS.

Oh yeah, your computers that have had drives fail that are only 6 weeks old, all roads lead to: damage/shock during shipping. An enterprise level SCSI drive might have survived because they have stronger actuators, bigger bearings, and other â??heavy dutyâ?? parts, so they are more resistant to shock. But what do those parts have to do with the interface?

Its like saying Japanese cars are twice as reliable as US or Euro cars because they have some superior technological advantage. Nope, same technology, just built better.

Tricord · Post by **Tricord** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 3:13 pm

To get back to the topic... tet, why don't you connect the two gigabits with a crossover cable, and toss in an additional, cheap 10/100 card for network connectivity.

Set routing tables on the gigabit machines to use the gigabit link for traffic to each other, and the 10/100MBit card towards the switch for the rest of the traffic.

You achieve gigabit connectivity at no significant cost.

Tetrad · Post by **Tetrad** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 3:25 pm

That sounds like more software configuration trouble than it's worth, and assumes I only will have 2 gigabit compatible machines.

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 5:06 pm

Warlock wrote:Ace shut up

HEY HEY!! he asked for our opinions, i gave mine........

so you shutup

Tricord · Post by **Tricord** » Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:50 pm

Tetrad wrote:That sounds like more software configuration trouble than it's worth, and assumes I only will have 2 gigabit compatible machines.

Yeah well... there's no such thing as a free lunch

If you want it, get it, a 5-port gigabit switch isn't exactly expensive any more...

Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Thu Mar 25, 2004 8:41 am

yeah link sys has a 5 port giga switch for onley 105 thats alot cheeper than when they 1st came out and they where 360 for a 5 port