Network Connection Setup

[Infrared digital]

Hi

I suspect that the network system setup in our offices is causing us problems, how would I go about assessing it and what is the best setup for rapid data transfer over the network ?

Our current setup has all out machines hooked up to the office network which goes through a central comms rack. Each machine is connected to the network by Cat5 cables from the Gigabit connection in each machine to the comms plugs in the wall.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

N

[Morne]

thats pretty much basic in most setups. You need to see your server setup. Can it handle the network throughput of serving textures etc while at the same time serving the needs of the rest of the office. Maybe add another network adapter in the server to relieve some congestion and/or get a seperate server just for 3D stuff.

[ior=0]

Are all your gigabit connections going into Gigabit Switches rather than a 1000BaseT Hub, check that it isn't a 100BaseT hub also.
You could try segmenting the network onto different switches to spread the load, using multiple NICs in the servers as DVP3D suggests.
Are your servers running server s/w? Might make a difference with more than 10 users accessing the server.
Are your hard disks fast enough (7200rpm) Striped (RAID1) Mirrored (RAID2) or even better RAID1+0?
You should try and identify where the bottleneck is happening...there probably is network admin s/w you could use to monitor the traffic flow to get some idea (sorry I can't recommend any).
Time to train someone in the company as a Network Administrator??
Hope that gives you some pointers.