[BigZAJ]

I have a WHS with one onboard gigabit nic right now. I got an intel dual gigabit nic from work and I'd like to put it in my server. How can I maximize my configuration to benefit from this new network card?


Wired gigabit network with cisco 24-port gigabit switch and pfsense router.

 

[nextguy]

I think you are looking for NIC teaming. Not sure if your system can handle that. But one gigabit port is already plenty fast.

 

[miimura]

One port of the new Intel NIC will be faster than almost any other non-Intel NIC you were using before. Don't bother with teaming or Link Aggregation until you find that you can saturate the single port on the new NIC.


- Mike

 

[justinm0424]



Quote:
Originally Posted by miimura /forum/post/18102228


one port of the new intel nic will be faster than almost any other non-intel nic you were using before. Don't bother with teaming or link aggregation until you find that you can saturate the single port on the new nic.


- mike

+1

 

[K-Spaz]

Typically for what you are wanting to do (or what they're suggesting is possible) you need a switch that's managed or at least, very expensive. In order for you to take advantage of binding, you'd probably need a greater workload than you can provide in a home.


I'd compare this to me playing with clustering in Linux. Yea, it's all kewl and everything, but I can't begin to simulate a workload that would demonstrate its benefits. If you want to play with binding, be prepare to spend at least a little more money (or get stuff at work) and remember you need 2 disk subsystems capable of transferring enough data to even see if what you have works. My setup here at home won't come close to maxing out my GigE, so until I would go to two systems with Raid, I am limited anyhow. As I only move large files very rarely, there's just no reason for me to play with it.

 

[sriramc]

A single Gigabit connection is hard to saturate, even with multiple HD streams. I've had good results with marvel yukon based nics. I got a $15 rosewill gigabit card from newegg, to replace the onboard nvidia 9300 lan, which had severe packet loss issues.

 

[Servicetech571]

Even a 100mb system is enough for most home use. I can run 2 HD feeds to and from 2 PC's at the same time w/o missing a beat. File transfers aren't quite as fast as going between 2 SATA drives in the same machine but are as fast as a USB Hard drive. Saturating something 10x the speed would be difficult in a home environment.

 

[bighick]

I can stream upto 4 1080p mkv's quite often on 100mbit. Do you do all your ripping on a desktop then transfer to another pc? That would be the only reason to do it.

 

[jman7]

I have two Intel Gigabit CT network cards connected by Static aggregation to two gigabit ports on my Netgear GS108T for my workstation. The same for my server. I rip all my movies to my server so I frequently max the bandwidth out. I must say I am a bit disappointed. With a single network card my average speed is between 90 to 95 MB/s. When I team two I get 105 to 110 MB/s. The same when I had tried my servers on board Marvell network cards so the Intel CT cards gave me no gains. The Realtek network cards however sucked so at least in my workstation the switch to Intel CT cards helped. The switch to teaming didn't help a whole lot. Did some research any my results are typical. Intel even has a Powerpoint on the lack of large performance increase with teaming. The reason why is beyond me. You would think two ports should equal double the bandwidth but it doesn't play out that way.

 

[salacious]

I was under the impression that teaming allowed multiple clients to achieve a high bandwidth but not double the speed to one client

e.g.

1 client to the server on 1 NIC - you get 100MB/s max from the server

2 clients to the server on 1 NIC - you get 100MB/s max from the server, so 50MB/s per client

1 client to the server on 2 NICs - you get 100MB/s max from the server

2 clients to the server on 2 NICs - you get 100MB/s max from the server per NIC but has a max throughput on 200MB/s, but you get 100MB/s per client

 

[jman7]



Quote:
Originally Posted by salacious /forum/post/18106209


I was under the impression that teaming allowed multiple clients to achieve a high bandwidth but not double the speed to one client

e.g.

1 client to the server on 1 NIC - you get 100MB/s max from the server

2 clients to the server on 1 NIC - you get 100MB/s max from the server, so 50MB/s per client

1 client to the server on 2 NICs - you get 100MB/s max from the server

2 clients to the server on 2 NICs - you get 100MB/s max from the server per NIC but has a max throughput on 200MB/s, but you get 100MB/s per client

Thank you. I did some research and you are right. I have wasted a lot of time and money thinking I could get 200 MB/s between two computers that are both teamed on each end. The file transfers will only go over a single gigabit card even though they are teamed. I see now that teaming is only good for servers that have multiple clients using high bandwidth at the same time.