[K12OSN] A question about gigabit

[David Trask]

"Support list for opensource software in schools." <k12osn at redhat.com> on
Monday, August 30, 2004 at 10:36 AM +0000 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.


Liken it to this....if you have 25 kids in a room that need to go out to
the hall and into 25 different classrooms...through a standard
door...they'll do so, but they can only get out so fast.  Now take the
same scenario yet let them out through a garage door.  Now the bottleneck
shifts from the original classroom down to the other 25 rooms.  In terms
of servers....if you come out gigabit and go into a switch at
gigabit...now the bottleneck has shifted down to the terminal...and the
difference is huge!  For instance...prior to gigabit...if 5 kids tried
playing tux type....by the 6th kid...it was crawling almost ot the point
of unplayable.  Now with the exact same server (all I did was put in an
SR24G2...24 ports of 10/100 and 2 ports of 10/100/1000 for uplink) and
holy cow!  The entire lab can play with no noticeable slowdown. 
OpenOffice pops right up..and so forth.  The SR24G2 from Amer.com (don't
go by the prices on the web page....email Michelle   mboers at amer.com) 
it's only $179.  Good price for what you get.

David N. Trask
Technology Teacher/Coordinator
Vassalboro Community School
dtrask at vcs.u52.k12.me.us
(207)923-3100