gigbit stability?

[jujubee]

I see that fancy-pants website you got going...

Now is the answer. Chances are your racks have gigabit built-in. If you really want to see an impact drop your network down to 10 megabits.

[DaForce]

For those of you running nforce4 motherboards (most likely with X2 cpus) in the nforce network driver properties you there is an option for optimize for: cpu or throughput. If you change it to throughput your network will go alot faster when transfering large files.
The difference i noticed between myself and a fried was about 30mb/s up to 70mb/s
But of course there is somewhat more cpu usage used as well.

[timmatron]

Lets say if we did get a gigabit switch. Then that would mean that we would probably have to re-run all of our network cables with new ones that can support faster transfers? I can't actually see that happening just yet.

Right now though our main server is one old beast of a machine that is on it's last leg. Anything we upgrade from this is going to be a real relief.

Sorry if I'm getting of topic.

[DJ-Studd]

Your cabling will most probably be Cat5e. Cat5e is used for all data cabling thse days, so it depends on it's age.
Have a look, because you'll certainly notice the difference a gigabit network makes!

-- DJ

[jujubee]

SMC Gigabit 8 port 10/1000 switch -$100

Netgear ga311 gigabit Adapter - $16.00 (some of your newer comps may already have Gigabit)

5e cabling from Microcenter up here in Cambridge - $20-25 for 100 feet. Or you can buy your own crimper and cable box and string it the whole place yourself for about $100.

The top two prices come from Pricewatch.
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No matter what, your dropping is probably caused by running textures off a same comp as your rendering from causing you a bottleneck. You can just forgo the whole thing.

If you want to unlead the network transfers to run 10x faster for under $500 and half a days worth of work - I guess you look at how much time you'll save over the couple years (even longer.) It still doesn't make sense to buy less than Gigabit at this point.

I should probably add that you can get unreliable gigabit transfers through old cabling depending on the proximity from the router to your computers. You can check the speed under your network adapter properties. Usually from my experience, these computers have to be right on top of the router/switch (<10ft.)

[timmatron]

Well it looks like all of the major lines are cat5e, so thats good. Our server is supposed to be installed tomorrow, so I'm going to see if we can get a new switch between now and then.

Thanks for all the advice.

[timmatron]

So it turns out the 10/100 switch we got was a mistake. We had meant to get a gigabit switch all along, so I'm glad we got that all cleared up.

[Syclone1]

At the Co Im at rite now there running on 100BT and to put it short it sux arse, I cant wait to get home on my gigabit at night...

[Giovanni]

Well, my configuration is as follow:

DSL modem --> router --> gigabit switch --> 6 machines

One of the machine is may workstation, from which I send all BB jobs.
If internet goes down, I don't care, becuse the swith still assignes IP to the local machines. Also, the workstation as USB drives with some of the textures.

The problem is, sometime ALL 6 machine do not receive an IP, and I have to reset the switch or the router.

If it was a cable, only one computer at a time would lose connection....

Thanks for all infos....I will try to debug my network.

regards

gio

[Syclone1]

well if the machines are not receiving IP's then thats most likely the router, thats where you get your IP's from. Also if you only have the few machines then just create static IP's for each one. I did that a while back and have had no issues for a long time.

-dave

[mike.edel]

i had similar issues with a d-link router a while back
it was overheating quite regularly - causing it to crash (you had to unplug it to reset it)
until some day it wouldnt start any more
now i'm using a zyxel which has been running very stable

btw: for only 5 or 6 machines i also would recommend to use static ips out of an internal ip range (196.168.1.???)
you'll probably have to reconfigure your router (turn off dhcp and find out which ip it has, youll need to enter that as the gateway at all computers)

[jujubee]

The problem is, sometime ALL 6 machine do not receive an IP, and I have to reset the switch or the router.

Yeah - was going to suggest same thing as Syclone. Look in your router setting to assign static IPs. Then look in your TCP/IP properties and assign a static number to each machine. Then make sure they all have same subnet mask and default gateway.