Decide if you need to improve your network.

• If you and your family members regularly upload large files, stream media on the Internet, or perform other tasks that heavily load your network, for example, a file-hosted server, or play online games, you would gladly invest in improving to Gigabit Ethernet.
• Medium and large enterprises require many users to be connected over the network and at the same time be able to increase their productivity.
• Individuals who use the Internet alone for non-resource-intensive network tasks like email, instant messaging or surfing the web may not see any benefit in improving network access to Gigabit Ethernet.

Introduction

Networks based on 10/100 Mbps Ethernet will be more than enough for any task in small networks. But what about the future? Have you thought about streaming video over your home's network? Will 10/100 Ethernet cope with them?

In our first article on Gigabit Ethernet, we'll take a closer look at it and determine if you need it. We'll also try to find out what you need to create a gigabit-ready network and take a quick tour of gigabit equipment for small networks.

What is Gigabit Ethernet?

Gigabit Ethernet is also known as gigabit over copper or 1000BaseT... It is a regular Ethernet version operating at speeds up to 1,000 megabits per second, that is, ten times faster than 100BaseT.

Gigabit Ethernet is based on the IEEE standard 802.3z which was approved in 1998. However, in June 1999, an addendum came out to it - the standard of gigabit Ethernet over copper twisted pair. 1000BaseT... It was this standard that was able to bring Gigabit Ethernet out of server rooms and backbones, ensuring its use in the same conditions as 10/100 Ethernet.

Prior to 1000BaseT, Gigabit Ethernet required the use of fiber-optic or shielded copper cables, which are hardly suitable for conventional LANs. These cables (1000BaseSX, 1000BaseLX and 1000BaseCX) are still used in special applications today, so we will not cover them.

The 802.3z Gigabit Ethernet group has done an excellent job of releasing a universal standard ten times faster than 100BaseT. 1000BaseT is also backward compatible with 10/100 hardware, it uses CAT-5 cable (or higher category). By the way, today a typical network is built on the basis of the fifth category cable.

Do we need it?

The first literature on Gigabit Ethernet pointed to the enterprise market as an area of ​​application for the new standard, and most often to data warehouse connectivity. Since Gigabit Ethernet provides ten times the bandwidth of the traditional 100BaseT, a natural application of the standard is to connect high-bandwidth sites. It is the communication between servers, switches, and backbones. This is where Gigabit Ethernet is needed, needed and useful.

As the price of gigabit equipment fell, the scope of 1000BaseT expanded to computers for "power users" and workgroups using "demanding bandwidth applications ".

Since most small networks have modest data needs, they are unlikely to ever need 1000BaseT network bandwidth. Let's take a look at some typical small network applications and assess their need for Gigabit Ethernet.

Do we need him, continuation

• Transferring large files over the network

  Such an application is typical, rather, for small offices, especially in companies dealing with graphic design, architecture or other business dealing with the processing of files of tens to hundreds of megabytes in size. You can easily calculate that a 100MB file will be transferred over a 100BaseT network in just eight seconds [(100MB x 8bit / byte) / 100Mbps]. In reality, many factors degrade the transfer speed, so your file will take a little longer to transfer. Some of these factors are related to the operating system, running applications, the amount of memory on your computers, processor speed, and age. (The age of the system affects the speed of the buses on the motherboard.)

  Another important factor is the speed of network equipment, and the move to gigabit equipment can eliminate potential bottlenecks and speed up the transfer of large volumes of files. Many will argue that getting speeds above 50 Mbps on a 100BaseT network is far from trivial. Gigabit Ethernet, on the other hand, will be able to provide throughput above 100 Mbps.

• Network redundancy devices

  You can think of this case as a variant of "large files". If your network is configured to back up all computers to a single file server, then Gigabit Ethernet will speed up the process. However, there is also underwater rock- an increase in the "pipe" of transmission to the server may not lead to a positive effect if the server does not have time to process the incoming data stream (this also applies to the backup media).

  To benefit from a high-speed network, you should equip your server with more memory and back up to a fast hard drive rather than tape or CDROM. As you can see, you need to thoroughly prepare for the transition to Gigabit Ethernet.

• Client-server applications

  This area of ​​application is again more common in small business networks than in home networks. Between client and server in similar applications a large amount of data can be transferred. The approach is the same: you need to analyze the amount of transmitted network data to see if the application can keep up with the increase in network bandwidth and if this data is enough to load the Gigabit Ethernet.

In truth, we believe that most home network builders are unlikely to find sufficient reason to buy gigabit equipment. In small business networks, moving to gigabit can help, but we recommend that you analyze the amount of data transferred first. Everything is clear with the current state. But what if you want to take into account the possibility of future upgrades. What do you need to do today to be ready for it? In the next part of our article, we will look at the changes that need to be made to the most expensive, most often and most time consuming, part of the network - cable.

Gigabit Ethernet Cable

As we mentioned in the introduction, one of the key requirements of the 1000BaseT standard is the use of Category 5 (CAT 5) or higher cable. That is, Gigabit Ethernet can work on the existing cable structure of the 5th category... Agree, this opportunity is very convenient. Typically, all modern networks use Category 5 cable, unless your network was installed in 1996 or earlier (the standard was approved in 1995). However, here exists several pitfalls.

• Four pairs required

  As seen from of this article 1000BaseT uses all four pairs of Category 5 (or higher) cable to create four 250 Mbps links. (Another coding scheme is also used - five-level pulse amplitude modulation - to stay within the 100 MHz CAT5 frequency range). As a result, we can use the existing CAT 5 cabling structure for Gigabit Ethernet.

  Since 10 / 100BaseT only uses two out of four CAT 5 pairs, some people did not plug in extra pairs when laying their networks. Pairs were used, for example, for a telephone or for Power over Ethernet (POE). Fortunately, gigabit NICs and switches are smart enough to fall back to 100BaseT if all four pairs are unavailable. Therefore, in any case, your network will work with gigabit switches and network cards, but you will not get high speed for the money paid.

• Don't use cheap connectors

  Another problem for amateur networkers is poor crimping and cheap wall sockets. They lead to impedance mismatches, resulting in return loss and, as a result, reduced bandwidth. Of course, you can try head-on search for the cause, but you'd better get a network tester that can detect return loss and crosstalk. Or just put up with the low speed.

• Length and topology limitations

  1000BaseT is limited to the same maximum segment length as 10 / 100BaseT. Thus, the maximum network diameter is 200 meters (from one computer to another through one switch). For 1000BaseT topology, the same rules apply as for 100BaseT, except that only one repeater per network segment (or, more precisely, one “half-duplex collision domain”) is allowed. But since Gigabit Ethernet does not support half-duplex transmission, you can forget about the last requirement. In general, if your network was doing fine under 100BaseT, you should have no problem going to gigabit.

Gigabit Ethernet Cable Continued

It is best to use a cable for laying new networks. CAT 5e... Although CAT 5 and CAT 5e both pass 100 MHz, CAT5e cable is manufactured taking into account additional parameters important for better transmission of high frequency signals.

Review the following Belden documents for more information on CAT 5e cable specifications (in English):

Although a modern CAT 5 cable will work just fine with 1000BaseT, you might be better off choosing CAT 5e if you want to guarantee high bandwidth. If you're hesitant, estimate the cost of a CAT 5 and CAT 5e cable and go your way.

The One Thing You Should Avoid Is Purchase Recommendations CAT 6 cable for gigabit Ethernet. CAT 6 was added to the TIA-568 standard in June 2002 and it skips frequencies up to 200 MHz... Sellers will most likely persuade you to buy the more expensive sixth category, but you will only need it if you plan to build a network. 10 Gbps Ethernet over copper wiring, which is hardly realistic at the moment. What about CAT 7 cable? Forget about it!

If you have a good amount, then it is better to spend it on network specialist which possesses sufficient experience in laying gigabit networks... A specialist will be able to correctly lay cables or check your existing network to work with gigabit Ethernet. When installing a CAT 6 cable, we highly recommend that you seek professional help, as this cable specifies the bend radius and special high-quality connectors.

Gigabit equipment

In a way, the question of "gigabit or not" could have been the subject of controversy a year or a couple of years ago. From the point of view of a SOHO buyer, the transition from 10 to 10/100 Mbps has already happened. New computers are equipped with 10/100 Ethernet ports, routers already use built-in 10/100 switches rather than 10BaseT hubs. However, such a change is not a consequence of the demands and wishes of home networkers. They are content with existing equipment.

For these changes, we should thank corporate users who buy only 10/100 equipment in bulk today, which allows us to lower prices for it. Once consumer equipment makers discovered they could use 10BaseT chips versus 10/100 options expensive, they did not hesitate for a long time.

Thus, yesterday's 10BaseT hub architecture has quietly migrated to today's 10/100 switched networks. We will experience the same transition from 10/100 to 10/100/1000 Mbps. And although there is still a year or two left before the tipping point, the transition already started and prices continue to fall steadily.

All you need is to buy a gigabit network card and a gigabit switch. Let's take a closer look at them.

• Network cards

  Branded 32-bit PCI 10/100 / 1000BaseT network cards such as Intel PRO1000 MT, Netgear GA302T and SMC SMC9552TX cost from $ 40 to $ 70 on the Internet. Products from second-tier manufacturers are about $ 5 cheaper. And while gigabit NICs are about two and a half times more expensive than the average 10/100 cards, your wallet is unlikely to notice any difference at all, unless you buy them in bulk.

  You can find network cards that support not only the 32-bit PCI bus, but also the 64-bit one, but they are also more expensive. What you won't see are CardBus adapters for your laptops. For some reason, manufacturers believe that notebooks do not need gigabit networks at all.

• Switches

  But the price of 10/100/1000 switches makes you think ten times about the feasibility of switching to gigabit Ethernet. The good news is that transparent gigabit switches are now available, which are much cheaper than their managed counterparts for the enterprise market.

  A simple four-port 10/100/1000 Netgear GS104 switch can be purchased for less than $ 225. If you opt for lesser-known brands like TRENDnet's TEG-S40TXE, you can reduce the cost to $ 150. Few four ports - please. The eight-port version of the Netgear GS108 will set you back about $ 450, and the TRENDnet TEG-S80TXD about $ 280.

  Considering that a 5-port 10/100 switch costs only $ 20 today, the prices for gigabit will seem too high to some. But remember, until recently, you could only buy Managed Gigabit Switches at $ 100 + per port. Prices are heading in the right direction!

Do you have to change computers?

Here's a little secret to Gigabit Ethernet: Under Win98 or 98SE, you probably won't get any benefit from Gigabit speed. While you can try to improve throughput by editing the registry, you still don't get a significant performance boost over your current 10/100 hardware.

The problem lies in the Win98 TCP / IP stack, which was not designed with high-speed networking in mind. The stack has problems even using 100BaseT networks, what can we say about gigabit communication then! We'll come back to this issue in the second article, but for now, you should only consider Win2000 and WinXP to work with gigabit Ethernet.

With the last sentence we are by no means not assumes that only Windows 2000 and XP support gigabit network cards. We just haven't tested the performance under other operating systems, so please refrain from sarcastic comments!

If you're wondering if you'll have to throw out your good old computer and buy a new one to use Gigabit Ethernet, then our answer is “maybe”. Based on our practical experience, one hertz of "modern" processors equals one bit per second of network bandwidth... One of the manufacturers of gigabit networking equipment agreed with us: any machine with a clock speed 700 MHz or lower will not be able to fully utilize the bandwidth of the Gigabit Ethernet. So even with the right operating system, old computers are gigabit Ethernet like a dead poultice. You will sooner see speeds 100-500 Mbps

I was in no rush to move my home network from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps, which is pretty strange to me since I am transmitting over the network a large number of files. However, when I spend money on upgrading my computer or infrastructure, I believe I should immediately get a performance boost in the applications and games I run. Many users like to amuse themselves new video card, central processing unit and some gadget. However, for some reason, networking equipment does not attract such enthusiasm. Indeed, it is difficult to invest the money earned in the network infrastructure instead of another technological birthday present.

However, my bandwidth requirements are very high, and at one point I realized that the infrastructure for 100 Mbps was no longer enough. All my home computers already have 1Gbps integrated adapters (on motherboards ah), so I decided to take the price list of the nearest computer company and see what I need to transfer the entire network infrastructure to 1 Gbps.

No, a home gigabit network is not that complicated at all.

I bought and installed all the hardware. I remember that it used to take about a minute and a half to copy a large file over a 100 Mbps network. After upgrading to 1 Gbps, the same file was copied in 40 seconds. The performance gains were nice, but I still didn't get the tenfold superiority that one would expect from comparing the 100 Mbps versus 1 Gbps bandwidth of the old and new networks.

What is the reason?

For a gigabit network, all parts of it must support 1 Gbps. For example, if you have gigabit network cards and corresponding cables installed, but the hub / switch only supports 100 Mbps, then the entire network will operate at 100 Mbps.

The first requirement is a network controller. It is best if each computer on the network is equipped with a gigabit network adapter (separate or integrated on the motherboard). This requirement is the easiest to meet, since most motherboard manufacturers have been integrating gigabit network controllers over the past couple of years.

The second requirement is that the network card must also support 1 Gbps. There is a common misconception that gigabit networks require Category 5e cable, but in fact even older Cat 5 cables support 1 Gbps. However, Cat 5e cables have better performance, so they will be a better solution for gigabit networks, especially if the cables are of decent length. However, Cat 5e cables are still the cheapest today because the old Cat 5 standard is outdated. Newer and more expensive Cat 6 cables offer even better performance for gigabit networks. We'll compare the performance of Cat 5e vs Cat 6 cables later in this article.

The third and probably most expensive component in a gigabit network is a 1 Gbps hub / switch. Of course, it is better to use a switch (possibly paired with a router), since a hub or hub is not the most intelligent device that simply broadcasts all network data to all available ports, which leads to a large number of collisions and slows down network performance. If you need high performance, then a gigabit switch is indispensable, since it redirects network data only to the correct port, which effectively increases the network speed compared to a hub. A router usually contains a built-in switch (with multiple LAN ports) and also allows you to connect your home network to the Internet. Most home users understand the benefits of a router, so a gigabit router is an attractive option.

How fast should gigabits be? If you hear the prefix "giga", then you probably mean 1000 megabytes, while a gigabit network should provide 1000 megabytes per second. If you think so, then you are not alone. But, alas, in reality everything is different.

What is gigabit? This is 1000 megabits, not 1000 megabytes. There are 8 bits in one byte, so let's just count: 1,000,000,000 bits divided by 8 bits = 125,000,000 bytes. There are about a million bytes in a megabyte, so a gigabit network should provide a theoretical maximum data transfer rate of about 125 MB / s.

Sure, 125 MB / s doesn't sound as impressive as gigabits, but think about it: a network at this speed should theoretically transfer a gigabyte of data in just eight seconds. A 10 GB archive should be transferred in just a minute and 20 seconds. The speed is incredible: just remember how long it took to transfer a gigabyte of data before USB sticks were as fast as they are today.

The expectations were serious, so we decided to transfer the file over a gigabit network and enjoy the speed close to 125 MB / s. We don't have any specialized wondrous hardware: a simple home network with some old but decent technology.

Copying a 4.3 GB file from one home computer to another ran at an average speed of 35.8 MB / s (we ran the test five times). This is only 30% of the theoretical ceiling for a gigabit network of 125 MB / s.

What are the causes of the problem?

It is quite easy to select the components for installing a gigabit network, but getting the network to work at maximum speed is much more difficult. The factors that can lead to network slowdown are numerous, but as we have found, it depends on how fast hard drives capable of transmitting data to the network controller.

The first limitation to consider is the interface of the gigabit LAN controller with the system. If your controller is connected via the old PCI bus, then the amount of data that it can theoretically transfer is 133 MB / s. For 125MB / s Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth, this seems like enough, but remember that the bandwidth PCI bus distributed throughout the system. Each PCI add-on card and many system components will use the same bandwidth, reducing the resources available network card... Controllers with a new interface PCI Express(PCIe) there is no such problem, since each PCIe lane provides at least 250 MB / s of bandwidth, and is exclusive to the device.

The next important factor that affects the speed of the network is cables. Many experts point out that if you run network cables near power cables that are sources of interference, low speeds guaranteed. Long cable lengths are also problematic as Cat 5e copper cables are certified for a maximum length of 100 meters.

Some experts recommend running the newer Cat 6 cables instead of Cat 5e. It is often difficult to justify such recommendations, but we will try to test the impact of the cable category on a small gigabit home network.

Let's not forget about the operating system. Of course, this system is rarely used in a gigabit environment, but it should be noted that Windows 98 SE (and older operating systems) will not be able to take advantage of Gigabit Ethernet, since the TCP / IP stack of this operating system is barely able to load a 100-Mbps connection. fully. Windows 2000 and later Windows versions already fit, although in the old operating systems some tweaks will have to be made to make the most of the network. We'll be using Windows Vista 32-bit for our tests, and while Vista's reputation isn't the best for some tasks, it has been supporting gigabit networking from the outset.

Now let's move on to hard drives. Even the old IDE interface with the ATA / 133 specification should be sufficient to support a theoretical file transfer rate of 133 MB / s, while the newer SATA specification fits the bill as it provides at least 1.5 Gb / s (150 MB /with). However, while cables and controllers can handle data transfers at that speed, the hard drives themselves cannot.

Take a typical modern HDD by 500 GB, which should provide a constant bandwidth of about 65 MB / s. At the beginning of the plates (outer lanes), the speed can be higher, however, as the transition to the inner lanes, the throughput decreases. Data on internal tracks is read more slowly, at a speed of about 45 MB / s.

It seemed to us that we had considered all possible bottlenecks. What was left to do? We had to do some tests and see if we could get the network performance up to the theoretical limit of 125 MB / s.

Test configuration

Tests and settings

Before we move on to any benchmarks, we decided to test the hard drives without using the network to see what bandwidth we can expect in an ideal scenario.

Our home gigabit network has two PCs. The first one, which we will call the server, is equipped with two disk subsystems. The primary hard drive is a 320GB Seagate Barracuda ST3320620AS a couple of years old. The server acts as a NAS with a RAID array of two 1TB Hitachi Deskstar 0A-38016 hard drives mirrored for redundancy.

We called the second PC on the network a client, it has two hard drives: both 500 GB Western Digital Caviar 00AAJS-00YFA about six months old.

We first tested the speed of the server and client system hard drives to see what performance we can expect from them. We used the hard drive test in SiSoftware Sandra 2009.

Our dreams of achieving gigabit file transfer speeds were immediately dashed. Both of the single hard drives achieved a maximum read speed of around 75 MB / s under ideal conditions. Since this test is carried out in real conditions, and the drives are 60% full, we can expect read speeds closer to the 65 MB / s index, which we got from both hard drives.

But let's take a look at the performance of RAID 1 - the best given array the fact that a hardware RAID controller can increase read performance by receiving data from both hard drives at the same time, similar to RAID 0 arrays; but this effect is obtained (as far as we know) only with hardware RAID controllers, not with software RAID solutions. In our tests, the RAID array provided much better read performance than a single hard drive, so the chances are good that we will get fast file transfer rates over the network from a RAID 1 array. The RAID array provided an impressive peak throughput of 108 MB / s, but in in reality, the performance should be close to the 88 MB / s index, since the array is 55% full.

So we should get about 88 MB / s over a gigabit network, right? This is not so close to the 125 MB / s Gigabit ceiling, but the much faster 100 MB / s networks that have a 12.5 MB / s ceiling, so 88 MB / s would be a good idea in practice.

But it's not that simple. The fact that the read speed from hard drives is quite high does not mean at all that they will quickly write information in real conditions. Let's run some tests of writing to disks before using the network. We'll start with our server and copy a 4.3GB image from a fast RAID array to a 320GB system hard drive and vice versa. Then we'll copy the file from the client's D: drive to its C: drive.

As you can see, copying from the fast RAID array to the C: drive yielded an average speed of only 41 MB / s. And copying from the C: drive to a RAID 1 array resulted in a drop down to just 25 MB / s. What's happening?

This is exactly what happens in reality: the hard drive C: was released a little over a year ago, but it is 60% full, probably a little fragmented, so it does not break records on record. There are other factors as well, namely how fast the system and memory in general are performing. A RAID 1 array is made up of relatively new hardware, but due to redundancy, information must be written to two hard drives at the same time, which slows down performance. While a RAID 1 array can provide high read performance, write performance has to be sacrificed. Of course, we could have used a striped RAID 0 array, which gives high read and write speeds, but if one hard drive dies, all information will be corrupted. In general, RAID 1 is a better option if the data stored on the NAS is valuable to you.

However, all is not lost. The new 500GB Digital Caviar drive is capable of recording our file at 70.3 MB / s (an average of five test runs), and also gives a maximum speed of 73.2 MB / s.

With all that said, we expected to get a maximum Gigabit transfer rate of 73 MB / s in real-world conditions from the NAS RAID 1 array to the client's C: drive. We will also test file transfers from the client C: drive to the server C: drive to see if we can realistically expect 40 MB / s in that direction.

Let's start with the first test, in which we sent a file from the client's C: drive to the server's C: drive.

As you can see, the results are in line with our expectations. A gigabit network, which is theoretically capable of 125 MB / s, sends data from the client's C: drive at the fastest possible speed, probably in the region of 65 MB / s. But, as we showed above, the server C: drive can only write at about 40 MB / s.

Now let's copy the file from the server's high-speed RAID array to the C: drive of the client computer.

Everything turned out as we expected. From our tests, we know that the C: drive of the client computer is capable of writing data at a speed of about 70 MB / s, and the performance of the gigabit network was very close to this speed.

Unfortunately, our results do not even come close to the theoretical maximum throughput of 125 MB / s. Can we test the speed limit of the network? Of course, but not in a realistic scenario. We will try to transfer information over the network from memory to memory to bypass any bandwidth limitations of hard drives.

To do this, we will create a 1 GB RAM disk on the server and client PCs, and then transfer the 1 GB file between these disks over the network. Since even slow DDR2 memory can transfer data at over 3000 MB / s, network bandwidth will be the limiting factor.

We achieved a maximum speed of our gigabit network of 111.4 MB / s, which is very close to the theoretical limit of 125 MB / s. An excellent result, there is no need to complain about it, since the real bandwidth will still not reach the theoretical maximum due to transmission additional information, errors, retransmissions, etc.

The conclusion will be as follows: today, the performance of transferring information over a gigabit network rests on hard drives, that is, the transfer speed will be limited by the slowest hard drive participating in the process. Having answered the most important question, we can move on to speed tests depending on the cable configuration so that our article is complete. Could optimizing cabling deliver network speeds even closer to theoretical limits?

Since the performance in our tests was close to anticipated, we are unlikely to see any improvement when changing the cable configuration. But we still wanted to run tests to get closer to the theoretical speed limit.

We ran four tests.

Test 1: default.

In this test, we used two cables about 8 meters long, each connected to a computer at one end and to a gigabit switch at the other. We left the cables where they were laid, that is, next to the power cables and outlets.

This time we used the same 8m cables as in the first test, but moved network cable as far as possible from power cords and extension cords.

In this test, we removed one of the 8 cables and replaced it with 1 meter Cat 5e cable.

In the last test, we replaced 8m Cat 5e cables with 8m Cat 6 cables.

In general, our testing of various cable configurations did not show a significant difference, but conclusions can be drawn.

Test 2: Reducing noise from power cables.

On smaller networks, such as our home network, tests show you don't have to worry about running LAN cables near electrical cables, outlets, and extension cords. Of course, the pickup will be higher in this case, but this will not give a serious effect on the network speed. With that said, it's best to avoid laying near power cords, and remember that things might be different in your network.

Test 3: reducing the length of the cables.

This is not a completely correct test, but we tried to spot the difference. It should be remembered that replacing an eight-meter cable with a meter cable can lead to an effect on the result of simply different cables than differences in distance. In any case, in most tests we see no significant difference except for an abnormal increase in bandwidth when copying from the client's C: drive to the server's C: drive.

Test 4: replacing Cat 5e cables with Cat 6 cables.

Again, we found no significant difference. Since the cables are about 8 meters long, longer cables can make a big difference. But if your length is not maximum, then Cat 5e cables will work quite fine on a home gigabit network with a distance of 16 meters between two computers.

It is interesting to note that the manipulation of the cables had no effect on the transfer of data between the RAM disks of computers. It is quite obvious that some other component on the network was limiting performance to the magic figure of 111 MB / s. However, such a result is still acceptable.

Do Gigabit Networks Provide Gigabit Speed? As it turns out, they almost give it.

However, in the real world, network speed will be severely limited by hard drives. In a synthetic memory-to-memory scenario, our gigabit network gave performance very close to the theoretical 125 MB / s limit. Regular network speeds, taking into account the performance of hard drives, will be limited to the level from 20 to 85 MB / s, depending on the hard drives used.

We also tested the impact of power cables, cable length, and Cat 5e to Cat 6 conversion. home network none of the factors mentioned had a significant impact on performance, although we want to note that in a larger and more complex network with longer lengths, these factors can affect much more strongly.

In general, if you are transferring a large number of files on your home network, then we recommend setting up a gigabit network. Moving from a 100Mbps network will give you a nice performance boost, at least you get a 2x increase in file transfer speeds.

Gigabit Ethernet on your home network can give you more performance gains if you read files from fast NAS storage that uses hardware RAID. On our test network, we transferred a 4.3GB file in just one minute. Over a 100 Mbps connection, the same file was copied for about six minutes.

Gigabit networks are becoming more affordable. Now all that remains is to wait for the speed of the hard drives to rise to the same level. In the meantime, we recommend creating arrays that can bypass the limitations of modern HDD technologies. Then you can squeeze more performance out of your gigabit network.