Question about Switch Data Buffers

[DarkCyber]

I'm looking at getting a new gigabit switch for my network and was wonder what's the difference in the data buffers? Some of the switches I'm looking at have 256k buffer and some have a 1meg buffer. Is bigger better? And how does the buffer help out?

Thanks!

 

[|Tormentor|]

A more important feature to look for in newer swiches is how fast the backplane is. And a bigger buffer is always better.

 

[Xipher]

Basicly, if the Switch gets heavy traffic, a bigger buffer will mean less packet loss at the switch. If your going to have alot going on, and I mean like half the switch doing MAJOR traffic, the bigger buffer might help you out. See if you can find reviews of the ones you look at, as they might give you an idea about how much traffic they can handle before they start getting bogged down.

 

[DarkCyber]

This is just for use in my home lan. I have 4 pc's on it and only 2 of them will be actually using the gigabit speed. It's just for mostly moving large junks of data...video files from the camcorder...etc.

 

[ambit]

Is that data buffer or MAC address? /methinks it's data, but ya never know.
It also depends on the type of switching that model does.
If it's store and forward, i could see more buffer helping.
But if it's Cut through, i don't think you'll ever notice a difference.

And if you're doing Jumbo Frames, 1Mb won't be enough to hold a whole packet anyway.