what would the perfornace difference be between
Four 16 port switches compared to
One 64 port switch
Four 16 port switches compared to
One 64 port switch
network ?
- Thread starter douglas
- Start date
Provided you are running them at 100 full duplex you shouldn't see any performance degradation from either. The single 64 might be a bit more convenient.
What's it for? Are you going all ethernet or are you using fiber going into the switches. I use a 4 port router into a Cisco 24 port switch at home. (Router handles the DHCP). At work use fiber into the switches and ethernet from there to the client.
Just my thoughts, though I am not a network expert, my speciality lies in the client end of things.
Ciaran
What's it for? Are you going all ethernet or are you using fiber going into the switches. I use a 4 port router into a Cisco 24 port switch at home. (Router handles the DHCP). At work use fiber into the switches and ethernet from there to the client.
Just my thoughts, though I am not a network expert, my speciality lies in the client end of things.
Ciaran
we currently have the four 16 port switch set up (in the "closet"), and the old school use to be the tech guy before I came says that is NOT the way to go, and we need the one 64 port (so the system will be much much faster)
You would probably get a neglidgable performance boost. Might be measurable by a network stress-testing tool, but the users will not see any significant performance boost.douglas said:
IMO, one 64 port is the way to go simply for a few less wires to be dangling and a little more compact hardware. But you won't see any huge performance jump.
IMPO, If all ports are set to Auto Negotiate and the individual ports cannot be Configured Seperately you might see some degredation. But If each individual port is admin configurable, you should not see any decline or increase in performance between the two. Sometimes you might see such problems if the Nic can't negotiate Speed and Duplex properly. But Your best bet is to have all ports set to 100/FULL for Best performance and then Set your Nic's to Manual 100/Full.
There isn't a simple answer except perhaps that the single 64-port switch would be the fastest.douglas said:
Worst case would be the four switches connected in a serial daisy chain with two computers, one on each end of the chain, pushing the bandwidth limit of their ports while talking to each other. All that data's got to get through the crossovers connecting the switches together, so all inter-switch traffic would suffer.
On the 64-port switch, the switch just happily connects the two bandwidth hogs together and their conversation has no effect on other interconnected nodes.
I guess the answer's that if you're using significant bandwidth, the 64-port is better, sometimes significantly.
J