Gigabit to the dsktop......should be we plan for this?

[tosca925]

I was wondering on peoples thoughts on this. We are about to upgrade some of our switches but we are unsure about GB to desktop. Nearly all the pc's we buy in from now on will have 1gb nics.

Should be looking at upgrading these switches and core switches to allow for this now? or should we only really look at 1gb to desktop for Media studies or other video editing etc.

I thought I'd ask before we go on the upgrade path and get quoted in?

[limbo]

It does depend slightly on your network set up at present.

The key is whether you can feed a 24 port switch that has desktops connected to it with a sufficient bandwidth to provide the 1GB to destkop. i.e. it is not worth connecting the clients at 1GB if the switch itself can only connect to the core at 1 or 2 GB (unless the clients are only need a good connection to each other).

It is going to be getting the bandwidth in to your core that is going to cost the most money.

If however you have one central place where all your sockets terminate then it is probably not that much more expensive to buy stackable switches that have 1GB ports and definately worth the investment.

[contink]

For what it's worth I've been getting in the 10/100 switches with a couple of 10/100/1000 sockets. That approach at least allows you to get the server to talk to the switch faster and subsequently deal with more requests on the 10/100 ports.

[DMcCoy]

Thats not quite true though. Multicast?

Seeing as I'm replacing ancient unmanaged switches/hubs I decided that I might as well go to Gb for desktops. Mostly using the 2848s for cabinets.

[Mr_T]

Running 1gb to desktop pretty much everywhere. Just a thing to note is the backplane throughput on the switch. we have some HP4108 chasis with 1gb ports the backplane would not support all 160 ports in the switch all running at 1gb at the same time. however as most data tends to be in bursts and not all at the same time this isnt much of an issue. I like HPs 2848 and also the 5300 series kit too.

[Southwell]

We have a gigabit backbone with 10/100 and some gigabit switches running off of it. I would at least have the backbone of the network gigabit, depends on your budget really.

[Geoff]

I'm interested in this. However I'm wondering if anyone has switched to jumbo frames too?

[DMcCoy]

I'm interested in this. However I'm wondering if anyone has switched to jumbo frames too?

I haven't (yet). One issue is that ESX doesn't support jumbo frames anyway. Once the 10Gb link is active, I'll experiment with turning it on.

[enjay]

Our latest PCs have GbE NICs in them, but they're in 10/100 ports on the switches. The server is on GbE as are most of the uplinks on the switches.

I've got gig-to-desktop in my office (management PC and test/build PC) and although it is faster, I rarely benefit to be honest as I'm not playing video or moving files from the local computer to the server very much (except when making MSIs). Consider how much data you'll actually be moving to the local machine and back again, bearing in mind that all the students' document files are on the server. If you're streaming video or transferring huge Pinnacle or music files, then it is worth it; if not, it's not.

You do, of course, also need to get the crystal ball out and see if you will be doing these things at any point in the life-time of these switches.

Is there any way you could try it out? When we went to a Gig backbone, I chucked a couple of the IT Suite PCs in some spare ports on one of the switches to see what difference it made - that way I could sensibly justify the need to replace the 10/100s with 1000s (although as already stated I actually proved there isn't a need!).

[tosca925]

Thanks Guys

I am still undecided but we havea site survey tomorrow so will pick more brains then.

Ours is a big site so you I know its going to be costly.