[Pc_Support] Re: ABS 8-Port, 5-Port GbE Switch -- VSC7388, VSC7385 (Blog article)

[Derek Konigsberg]

> What speeds do you see out of them?  Are they crossover'd or are they hooked
> into a switch?
All my GigE interfaces terminate at that Intel NetStructure 470F that I 
mentioned, so they are hooked through a switch.  Benchmarking can be 
tricky, because "real world performance" can vary greatly from a "pure 
network benchmark".  And even pure network benchmarks can be affected a 
lot by the machines in question.

For example, I just did some quick netperf runs:
Tritainum(GA620) --> Photon(GA620): 159.41Mbps
Hyperion(Sun GigaSwift) --> Photon(GA620): 433.30Mbps

I'll also mention that the card in Tritainium is plugged into a 32-bit PCI 
slot (and I'm only using the Gig card there because it was the only good 
VLAN-capable card I had on-hand at the time).  Meanwhile, both Photon and 
Hyperion have their cards in 64-bit PCI slots.

Actual file transfers are much worse than these benchmarks, probably due 
to plenty of other factors including the fact that I'm using default 
1500byte MTUs on all the links.

> It's somewhat questionable I have any real need for GbE.  What do you do
> with yours?  Besides being able to backup the 300GB+ on my fileserver (which
> rarely changes by more than 2 or 3 GB a day) I can't think of much to do
> with it.
For me, it was to bring the backbone of my network together.  Even if I 
don't realize full performance, it is still a bit faster than 100Mbit.  I 
also make heavy use of the VLAN features, which are well supported on all 
my cards.

However, most people often don't even fully utilize 100Mbit ethernet. 
(though I'll easily exceed the speed of 10Mbit ethernet)

---------------------------
Derek Konigsberg
octo at logicprobe.org
http://hecgeek.blogspot.com
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