Network - Switches and 10/100/1000

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mda

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So I think we have a network bottleneck in our office -

Our main servers are all interconnected to an 8 port DLink gigabit switch.

However, the 8 port switch is connected to our backbone switch which is are 2 DLink DES-1024D, 24 port 10/100 switch.

Servers --> 8 port switch --> DES1024D (1) (connected to another) --> DES1024D (2)

Can I make multiple connections from the 8 Port Gigabit switch to the 1024D to theoretically multiply the server throughput to the rest of the network by x times the number of connections? Or should I connect the 8 port switch to both 24port switches separately? Or do many of both?

Or is this just silly? Just trying to think of low/no cost alternatives before doing any money-out.
 
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Just get a new 24-port switch, Zyxel GS-1910 or HP 1910 if you're on a budget.
//Danne
 
Thanks. That's probably my last resort as I'm not even sure if there is a network bottleneck as I don't even know how to measure how.

Any way to check if that single line from the 8port switch to the 24port 10/100 is choking?
 
Depends on what kind of work you're doing. The two backbone Switches as you mention, appear to support channel bonding (had to dig through some spec sheets), but you'd need to confirm that yourself going into there settings. So theoretically you could double the throughput from the 24 port to the 24 port ones.

The real problem I see is how much data is being sent on a constant basis? What is your definition of bottleneck (i.e. measurement)? Anything on the 8 port side should be good, but you're linking to a slower backbone. In networking it's the complete opposite of an ideal situation. Your backbone should be the powerhouse even if that means sacrificing ports. That should be the highway that you want to avoid any kind of congestion. It only makes sense that you'd eventually run into bottlenecking. Of course if the traffic stayed within the servers for the most part it wouldn't go past the 8 port switch going from 1Gbps LAN speeds to a 100Mbps congested backbone.

Connecting the 8 port into both switches just doesn't sound like a good long term solution at all.
 
I'm guessing your gigE switch is unmanaged too? If so, there's not a great way to tell if things are saturated. If you really want to tell if things are saturated, you can probably put a computer with two nics in bridge mode and watch the stats.

If you can avoid it, you probably don't want to chain the two 100M switches together; wire them individually to the gigE switch. But you're not going to be able to do multiple connections unless everything is managed.

Monoprice has a 24-port gigE switch (also unmanaged), for < $120 http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=105&cp_id=10521&cs_id=1052104&p_id=8746&seq=1&format=2 If you want to go super cheap.
 
All of our switches are unmanaged.

We're running everything from File Servers to Oracle servers inside the 8port switch, so I'm willing to bet that on peak times, the line between the 8 port switch and the single 24port switch could get saturated.

TBH this is more like based on a hunch of me just looking at our current configuration. It looks real ugly to me but I can't justify the expenditure unless there's a way of measuring that (I'll have to look at the PC-in-between suggestion).
 
As the first post said. Gig switches are not expensive.

I just bought 2 HP 1910's and total I paid $230 used for both of them.

So, they are affordable and available.
 
As far as monitoring your network performance goes (for the boss to get new gear), SNMP v2/v3 should be able to do this for you and allow you to peak in on whats going on. Problem is none of your gear seems to support it so you might have to individually load it on all machines and have that be sent to your administrative machine.

Someone else would have to guide you through this who is more capable than I though. There are quite a few of them hiding around here.
 
I'm assuming you have windows servers. Check out performance monitoring, It's built in and can show network stats
 
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