[K12OSN] A question about gigabit

"Terrell Prudé, Jr." microman at cmosnetworks.com
Mon Aug 30 18:59:19 UTC 2004


Mark Cockrell wrote:

> Hello all,
>    I've seen the recommendation for gigabit NICs in the K12LTSP server 
> a number of times on this list and I have a question regarding that.  
> Currently I have 10/100Mb switches in place, and when I set up my 
> shiny new terminal server, I used only one NIC and just tied it into 
> my existing network so that it can be accessed from anywhere on the 
> LAN.  So, here's my question:  With everything else on my LAN being 
> 10/100 would gigabit help me at all.  I could buy a new gigabit switch 
> and connect the server to it and it to the rest of my network, but it 
> seems to me that I would just be moving the bottleneck up the stream a 
> few inches.  Is my thinking correct, or would a gigabit switch, even 
> if it's the only one on the network, be advantageous?  I welcome any 
> thoughts on the subject.
>

You betcha it'll help, and the boxes on the same switch as the 
gigabit-enabled K12LTSP server will notice the benefit the most.  I also 
use  a single-NIC install, but my NIC is Gig-E, so my thin clients don't 
really have any network bandwidth issues.  See, X11 can suck up a lot of 
traffic.  If you are connecting this new gigabit switch to the rest of 
the LAN via a 10/100 connection (say, a crossover cable), then the folks 
"downstream" won't see as much benefit.  They will probably see a little 
bit because there's just more server bandwidth to share.

The way to do it, so that the entire school benefits, is to put Gig-E 
links between all of your switches.  This is what we do in my district, 
and so it doesn't matter if you're physically next to the server or way 
across the school in a distant wiring closet.  The response time is the 
same.

--TP
_____________________
Do you GNU!? <http://www.gnu.org>
Win freedom from all but 1 of 4000 spams with Mozilla Thunderbird. 
Download it now. <http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird>





More information about the K12OSN mailing list