Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

Link: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4603166&CatId=2796

I bought my first gigabit switch. It replaces the 5-port Trendnet 10/100 switch at the end of my Livingroom run.

At that end is one of the computers that I own that has a gigabit network card. The circa 1993 Dell Desktop that is currently my main home computer.

iperf from one end to the other end of my network shows no difference in speed. Of course, I wasn't really expecting to see any improvement. Though it was good to see what I was getting full speed and that it didn't degrade my speed.

The only other computer I currently have that has gigabit is/was the computer at the far end that I was iperf'ng with.

There's a plan to gradually add other gigabit switches to my home network (3 more), before I can finally see what gigabit between two computers is like.

The reason I got this switch, was that I was ordering some stuff from TigerDirect and needed some padding to get cheaper shipping. And, the old 5-port switch had one bad port on it, which was causing me some inconvenience. A switch with more ports might have been handy here since now I have no open ports at this position.

Hmmm, does the work MacBookPro do gigabit? Didn't bring that home, might be something to check out someday....

Not sure what's next on the upgrade plan. Need at least a 4 port in the closet and an 8-port for the other end of my home network (well, at a 7-port). The plan is for a Airport Extreme to go on the HomeTheater stack. Though while there's no Gigabit stuff there now, the going with an Extreme there does limit things...since whatever I put at this location, I would need at least 3 wired ports (one to the 'network' closet, one to my living room computer setup, and one to the Linksys Router or the 16-port TrendNet switch that links Cable Modem into my home network and feeds all the HomeTheater stuff.) Though there is one network run that has nothing attached now, but eventually will. So another small switch might go here interim....