Can a 1000mbs Gigabit serve 10 100mbs users at 100mbs?

P

Patman

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 13, 2004
Messages
1,053
I was going to hook my LAN dedicated gaming server up with a nice gigabit pci card. Does that require 64-bit, I won't mess with it if 32-bit bottlenecks it even the slightest. Any suggestions for cards? My question is can I serve 10 100mbs users or as soon as it hits the switch is it bottlenecked or can it effectively serve 10 users at 100mbs. If possible find me a good gigabit card.
 
You'll be fine. I doubt you or your users will saturate that bus enough for it to bottleneck. Just make sure you don't enable jumbo frames if the other users don't support it.
 
I don't think you'll notice any issue serving only 10 clients. Any gigabit card from a decent manufacturer will be sufficient.
 
You'd be more strained for bandwidth from your hard disks than the bus that the NIC resides on, fwiw. Provided that bus is a 64-bit/66+MHz one...
 
Im pretty sure your gigabit interface will only be able to get a 100 mbit connection to the switch, so, theoretically, each of the 10 clients will recieve 10 mbit from the server. I think.
 
nick_sabatino said:
Im pretty sure your gigabit interface will only be able to get a 100 mbit connection to the switch, so, theoretically, each of the 10 clients will recieve 10 mbit from the server. I think.
Click to expand...
Ack.

A switch gives you the full connection speed when you connect. If you have a 10/100 card, and you are connecting to a 10/100 switch, you get a 100mbit connection. Same for everyone else.

Same, for that matter, with gigabit equipment. Get a gbit switch, hook up a gbit card, gbit connection. Everyone will connect to the switch at the fastest speed.

If you can manage it, get jumbo frames end to end.

Does that require 64-bit, I won't mess with it if 32-bit bottlenecks it even the slightest
Click to expand...
64bit is a marketting term. There are two ways you could have meant this, and I'll explain them both:

1) 64bit os. This is simply refering to how much memory the processor can address. If there are other differences, someone please enlighten me. However, in relation to NICs, a 64bit OS will do nothing for you

2) 64bit PCI slot. Someone else will be able to do the math for you, but essentially, this too isn't something you need. A plain ol' 33mhz 32bit pci slot will work just fine for gaming ( in theory, what, 133mbits of data/s ? )

Because they are so cheap, I'd get a gigabit card, but as has been pointed out; Your harddrive will bottleneck the system before the network system does.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top