At 00:40 07/22/00, Chan Fan Chong wrote:
>I need advice on my client existing LAN setup.
>
>                                     Dlink Internet Server
>                                              |
>                                              |
>                                              |
>Main PC  --------------------------   10/100 Switch
>                                          |       |
>                                          |       |
>                                          |       |
>                                       HUB A     HUB B
>                                          |       |
>                                       8 PCs      7 PCs
>
>Hardware spec : Dlink Internet Server , Dlink 10/100 5 ports switch,
>Dlink 10Mbps hubs
>                 All PCs equiped with Allied Telesyn 10 Mbps Nic with IP
>Address assigned.
>                 All PCs are INTEL celerons 400, 64 MB Ram
>
>Recently, a friend told me to replace all the 10 Mbps Nic with 100 Mpbs
>Nic WITHOUT replace the HUBs WILL increase the bandwidth of the network.
>Is it true ?
>
>How I am going to increse the bandwidth of the network ?
>(1) replace HUBs with a switch(100Base) ?
>(2) replace 10base NIC with 100base NIC WITHOUT replace HUBs ?
>(3) replace 10base NIC with 100base NIC and replace HUBs with SWITCH ?


Hi Chan

I'm far from a Networking expert but it seems to me that your friend's
advice (choice 2 above) does little to help you. I'd think the NICs (even
if they are 10/100 NICs) would always talk to the 10 Mbps hubs at 10 Mbps.

If you replace the hubs with one (big) switch or two (smaller) switches
(10/100 of course), you should eliminate collisions and it will allow
you to set the NICs to Full Duplex. This should give a speed increase.
(This is choice (2) above.)

In addition to this, there is a web article that tests performance
differences between using switches and hubs on a small LAN. The results
showed that large file transfers took three to five times longer when
hubs were used than when switches were used. **There was no extra traffic
on the LAN to cause collisions**. Here's the article
http://www.techextreme.com/hardware/networking/hubswitch/
It seems that switches give benefits other than avoiding collisions.

Your third choice is of course the best. This could theoretically give
a ten fold performance increase...in some things anyway. (I don't know
what effect it would have on games.) I know on my little LAN, the only
machine with a 10 Mbps crawls. Everything else on my LAN (three Netgear
switches and the NICs in the other machines) is 100 Mbps.

Regards,
Bill

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