[Mageia-discuss] About routers and switches and Mbit/s

[Frank Griffin]

On 05/04/2012 05:49 PM, Marc Paré wrote:
>
> My ISP serves "downloads up to speeds of 6Mbps" ... I also realize the 
> if using DSL that is all depends on the location of the house and 
> telco hardware.

There's your answer.  6M << 1000M, so in terms of what you can pull from 
the external internet, you won't see a difference.

> All of our NIC's are gigabit NIC's.
>
> So would it be worthwhile to upgrade to gigabit router/switches.

I don't know your setup, but if you use both routers and switches with 5 
systems, I'm guessing that the router and all of the wired systems 
connect through the switch (that's really all they need to see each 
other), and the router takes care of DHCP, wireless, and gating to the 
external net.

In that case, it's probably worthwhile upgrading the switch to gigabit, 
as that will allow your internal systems to communicate at gigabit 
speeds.  The router can stay as it is, since it can only push data to 
the ISP at 6M tops anyway, and its interaction with the internal systems 
is limited to brief DHCP exchanges.

Wireless is another issue.  If the router is doing the wireless, 
upgrading to a good-quality n-level wireless router will give your 
wireless systems more parity with their wired brethren.  Be careful of 
high-speed n-level routers that only deliver their top-rated speed if 
all of the wireless NICs come from the same vendor.