Gigaethernet vs Ethernet?

[biglolly]

Here at work we have all our resources, textures and the like shared out on our network. We save all our projects across a network too.

What I was curious about was whether or not upgrading to gigaethernet would give us a noticeable performance increase when it comes to saving files, loading textures e.t.c. If we have 10 people all using the network and saving files and such I would guess it would be fairly congested?

Anyone have any experience with this?

[instinct]

GBit is a must....esp with bigger files....everything is putting load on the network...working with files, textures, sending network jobs etc....
100MBit would kill us here now that we´re used to GBit :P

Thorsten

[biglolly]

That's what I was thinking! Our servers all have gigaethernet cards but our routers/switches are only 100mbps. Seems like a waste to me.

Now to convince the others that 1000mbps is the way forward.

[biglolly]

So they think gigabit ethernet is a good idea...next thing we have to decide on is a new server!

Since the server is really just for hosting files and there are only 4 of us doing the architectural visualisation, what would be a decent spec of machine for this purpose? Do you need a dual processor set up or would a single processor do? Windows server 2003? SCSI drives?

[jujubee]

Don't forget also, people recommend newer CAT 5e? cables for Gigabit networking. It's well worth the added costs however.

[Syclone1]

Been running gigabit here for a little over a year and love it, its way better than 100BT. I have a couple 8 port gigabit switches that I mite retire as I saw on dell canada's site they have rackmount gigabit switches for a deascent price

And as juju mentioned you may have to upgrade your cableing to cat5e or cat6 to get the best performance and reliability.

-dave

[DaForce]

Cat6 ideally... but even as a placeholder normal cat5 works rather well too.
Its good for atleast 40MB/s