Opinion on gigabit switch

Does anyone have an opinion on this 1000Mbit switch or Hawking products in general? This is the best price I've seen and I would like to move some of my machines over to gigabit now that I have FLAC files being transfered over the network. Does "Auto- MDI/MDIX Ports" mean auto-crossover?

Thanks

From what I've heard about gigabit ethernet you shouldn't really expect 1000Mbit speeds- especially if you don't have 64-bit pci cards. Aside from that it looks like a great deal, even getting 300Mbit speed would be an improvement after all.

I have heard that 32-bit PCI will cap-out at around 800Mbit in optimal conditions. Even if I get half that I will be happier.

What I hope to be able to do is store the FLAC files on my Duron server and reencode to MP3 on my 2.4Ghz P4 without storing either the FLACs or MP3s on the P4.

Well, 32 bits at 33MHz would be:

32 bits * 33,000,000 per second * ( 1 kb / 1024 bits ) * ( 1 mb / 1024 kb ) ==
32 * 33,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 ==
1007 mbps

Full duplex gigabit ethernet would be 2 gigabits, so you've got, at best, half capacity (distributed any way you want, though), assuming that you don't have any other traffic on that PCI bus.

I've got a 32 bit PCI 1000BT card running full duplex and can average 4880kB/sec and peak 5645kB/sec (one direction). This is a PIII 1.1Ghz machine. I can get approximately the same speeds in both directions simulatneously.

-Zeke

I am curious what they mean by.
"Up to 200Mbps Speeds in Full Duplex Mode "
That doesn't sound like a 1G switch, more like a 10/100 with 1G capable ports, ie: not switching at 1G.
Unless, of course, its a typo. I would hate to assume that though.

OK, I checked properly this time!
Here is the link to the real info
http://www.hawkingtech.com/prodSpec.php?ProdID=137
The datasheet gives 2000Mb in full duplex.
Although only the GS400T actually lists the aggegated bandwidth (8G on the 400T).

Even so, that is a heck of a good price.

Thanks for the replies guys! I just bought one.

Rob,
Post your opinion on it when you get a chance. I'm curious to see if it's good.

-Zeke

Do you have a network bandwidth measuring utility you would like me to try?

Just to fill you in on the cards being used, the Duron Server has a 32-bit PCI Acer AOG-501 running Windows 2000 Advanced Server and the Pentium 4 is getting a Netgear GA302T (the Acer card seems to have been discontinued) running Windows XP Pro.

you could always set up mrtg to log it for you. watch where it caps over time

I've used a little utility called DU Meter (I've used it for about 3 years now). It's made by Hagel Technologies, is $19.95 to register. I'm sure there's other utilities out there, but that's the one I've been using.

I hope you like your new toy. It's a hoot transferring a 200 MB file in seconds. I copied 2GB of data bewteen two servers (64 bit cards) in a bit over three minutes. Yeeha.

-Zeke

netlimiter is a great app. mainly used to restrict bandwidth, it will show you what the Kb/sec for EACH process.

My fave is Novell LANalyzer, complete with its cute little dashboard.
http://support.novell.com/filefinder/6445/index.html

WHOA! I just became addict
Cool !

I use a free utility called Qcheck from NetIQ that I use to measure network speeds. I have two computers tied together with gigabit cards, and I get around 400-500 Mbits/sec. I got a about a 100 Mbit/sec increase using jumbo frames. You should check to see if your switch supports jumbo frames (not all do).

assuming that you don't have any other traffic on that PCI bus.

Or any other network activity/interrupts that steal cycles on the NIC/s. 'Course if this is really a 2-node network, there's probably not much to worry about!

OK, I finally set this up and my results are worse than expected. See the attached SiSoft Sandra network benchmark...

I am using Cat. 5e cable. Should I be using Cat. 6? Could that be a problem? Cat. 5 doesn't work at all.

EDIT: Actually, looking back on it, these results are quite good. I was looking at the Firewire score thinking it was 100Mbit ethernet without paying attention to the numbers. I am sending flacs over the network now and it's taking about 1 second per song.