GigE Network Recommendations?

[virtualrain]

Hi, I'm going to be setting up a new home network with two Vista machines. One will be my HTPC and the other my workstation. I will need to transfer large files between them and want to build the best GigE network I can between the two.

Some points to provoke discussion:
- What's a good GigE router recommendation?
- Is a lower-end business router better than a high-end home product?
- What's new in the Vista IP stack that I should be sure to leverage (i.e. auto RCV window sizing?, IPv6?, etc.)
- Since both PC's will have dual NIC's on the motherboard (680i for WS, NF4+Marvel for HTPC) should I consider bonding/teaming them?
- What about file transfer protocols... I hear Windows shared folders suck and I should look at iSCSI?

Anything else?

I look forward to your input! Thanks!

 

[jameswhite1979]

What about direct cable between them would this not the the fast way to data trasnfer with IP v6? else I like draytek or Cicso with a tiny VLAN.

 

[MerlinRML]

I just want to clarify before you get into discussion of IP protocols and the iSCSI protocol vs NFS/CIFS/SMB protocols in terms of greatest throughput. Is your workstation box or your HTPC going to have more than a single disk? I mean, if you're going to be bottlenecked at the disk, the discussion of protocols is purely academic.

 

[virtualrain]

Both systems will be running RAID0 with max disk STR of 150MB/s (1200Mbps).

Are there any GigE routers/switches that support link aggregation and jumbo frames?

 

[cmetz]

virtualrain,

>What's a good GigE router recommendation?

If you have SOHO needs, get a WRT54GL as your router, and a decent gigE switch. Look at D-Link and Netgear if you want jumbo frames - the SMC switches used to be the winners for SOHO + jumbo but the newer versions have issues. "Gigabit" routers are expensive and new/unstable, and for what? Unless your WAN is >10Mb/s a WRT54GL with third-party firmware is fine.

>Is a lower-end business router better than a high-end home product?

Probably, it's also a lot more expensive. What do you need to do that a SOHO router won't do?

>Since both PC's will have dual NIC's on the motherboard (680i for WS, NF4+Marvel for HTPC) should I consider bonding/teaming them?

No. It will make things more complex and add new ways to have problems, and won't help performance. You won't sustain a gigabit anyway.

>What about file transfer protocols... I hear Windows shared folders suck and I should look at iSCSI?

SMB sucks. iSCSI sucks too. What problem are you trying to solve? Are you sure Windows is the right solution to it?

>Both systems will be running RAID0 with max disk STR of 150MB/s (1200Mbps).

How are you getting max STR of 150Mb/s?

 

[virtualrain]

Originally posted by: cmetz
virtualrain,

>What's a good GigE router recommendation?

If you have SOHO needs, get a WRT54GL as your router, and a decent gigE switch. Look at D-Link and Netgear if you want jumbo frames - the SMC switches used to be the winners for SOHO + jumbo but the newer versions have issues. "Gigabit" routers are expensive and new/unstable, and for what? Unless your WAN is >10Mb/s a WRT54GL with third-party firmware is fine.

>Is a lower-end business router better than a high-end home product?

Probably, it's also a lot more expensive. What do you need to do that a SOHO router won't do?

>Since both PC's will have dual NIC's on the motherboard (680i for WS, NF4+Marvel for HTPC) should I consider bonding/teaming them?

No. It will make things more complex and add new ways to have problems, and won't help performance. You won't sustain a gigabit anyway.

>What about file transfer protocols... I hear Windows shared folders suck and I should look at iSCSI?

SMB sucks. iSCSI sucks too. What problem are you trying to solve? Are you sure Windows is the right solution to it?

>Both systems will be running RAID0 with max disk STR of 150MB/s (1200Mbps).

How are you getting max STR of 150Mb/s?

I don't know what it is, but I've posted this thread on a few different networking forums and its seems like this kind of discussion gets people's noses all out of joint.. it's like "who do you think you are trying to build a better home network!" LOL! You guys kill me. People spend countless hours and lots of money trying to wring every last MHz out of their overclocked CPU and get tons of support, and all I'm trying to do is engineer a top-notch home network and I get a bunch of resistance. I don't get it.

Anyway, to answer some questions in the hope that I might not be the only one trying to setup a high-performance home network...

- Yes I have SOHO needs, but I'm not content with the crap home routers. This site is any eye opener to the crap that Linksys and others are pushing on consumers...
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/

- I want to maximize (that is the highest possible) data transfer rate between my two PC's given the constraints that I'm (a) running Vista (b) each PC has 2 GigE NIC's (where one PC has 2 NIC's from different vendors) and (c) both PC's need internet access.

- I'm not doing this because I want a simple, easy solution. This is my hobby and I'm willing to invest the time necessary to sort out issues, test, troubleshoot, etc.

Hence, I want a GigE switch that actually has a backplane switch speed sufficient for the job. It should have jumbo frames to maximize performance. I will need a router to allow both PC's to access the internet that works with jumbo frames so it doesn't need to fragment the packets. Ideally, the network will also support a high number of simultaneous connections for Bittorrent.

Can anyone actually suggest something positive here?

 

[acaeti]

Hi! A DGS-2208 will support jumbo frames without breaking your wallet. I have never personally used a NIC teaming feature from a mobo maker - and considering how NVIDIA's tcp offloading and firewall programs have severely busted my networking performance, I wouldn't totally trust that they work, but hey, it's easy for you to try. My understanding is that the link teaming features will work with just a dumb switch.

I would stick with just plain old IPv4, but testing with IPv6 may reveal that it is faster (I doubt this personally, but have not had the opportunity to test). I would also stick with plain old windows SMB, as iSCSI may be a pain in the arse to setup. Give SMB w/ IPv4 and link teaming and jumbo frames a try and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

If you really want to give iSCSI a try I believe the StarPort/StarWind software for windows is freely available for you to try. I don't know if they have a Vista version.

 

[virtualrain]

Hey thanks! Good recommendation. Looks like a nice little switch. I'll certainly try a variety of things out to see what works best.

 

[Muscles]

Originally posted by: virtualrain

Originally posted by: cmetz
virtualrain,

>What's a good GigE router recommendation?

If you have SOHO needs, get a WRT54GL as your router, and a decent gigE switch. Look at D-Link and Netgear if you want jumbo frames - the SMC switches used to be the winners for SOHO + jumbo but the newer versions have issues. "Gigabit" routers are expensive and new/unstable, and for what? Unless your WAN is >10Mb/s a WRT54GL with third-party firmware is fine.

>Is a lower-end business router better than a high-end home product?

Probably, it's also a lot more expensive. What do you need to do that a SOHO router won't do?

>Since both PC's will have dual NIC's on the motherboard (680i for WS, NF4+Marvel for HTPC) should I consider bonding/teaming them?

No. It will make things more complex and add new ways to have problems, and won't help performance. You won't sustain a gigabit anyway.

>What about file transfer protocols... I hear Windows shared folders suck and I should look at iSCSI?

SMB sucks. iSCSI sucks too. What problem are you trying to solve? Are you sure Windows is the right solution to it?

>Both systems will be running RAID0 with max disk STR of 150MB/s (1200Mbps).

How are you getting max STR of 150Mb/s?

I don't know what it is, but I've posted this thread on a few different networking forums and its seems like this kind of discussion gets people's noses all out of joint.. it's like "who do you think you are trying to build a better home network!" LOL! You guys kill me. People spend countless hours and lots of money trying to wring every last MHz out of their overclocked CPU and get tons of support, and all I'm trying to do is engineer a top-notch home network and I get a bunch of resistance. I don't get it.

Anyway, to answer some questions in the hope that I might not be the only one trying to setup a high-performance home network...

- Yes I have SOHO needs, but I'm not content with the crap home routers. This site is any eye opener to the crap that Linksys and others are pushing on consumers...
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/

- I want to maximize (that is the highest possible) data transfer rate between my two PC's given the constraints that I'm (a) running Vista (b) each PC has 2 GigE NIC's (where one PC has 2 NIC's from different vendors) and (c) both PC's need internet access.

- I'm not doing this because I want a simple, easy solution. This is my hobby and I'm willing to invest the time necessary to sort out issues, test, troubleshoot, etc.

Hence, I want a GigE switch that actually has a backplane switch speed sufficient for the job. It should have jumbo frames to maximize performance. I will need a router to allow both PC's to access the internet that works with jumbo frames so it doesn't need to fragment the packets. Ideally, the network will also support a high number of simultaneous connections for Bittorrent.

Can anyone actually suggest something positive here?

I'm with you desiring the most efficient network possible minus Cisco equivalent prices. Most of the consumer level routers I've tried suck and I can't recommend many for any enthusiast. Since I got my 15mbps home internet connection, I had a linksys WRT54G and a netgear that either crapped out and died completely or couldn't handle the throughput entirely. I ended up using a dlink that did the job okay until I grabbed an old p3 1ghz I now use as a dedicated firewall (Smoothwall). I think this is the best solution if you've got an old spare box around collecting dust. Otherwise, I'd probably get a dlink DGL-4300.

I needed a new gigabit switch and just ordered the DGS-2208 last night actually. I'm sure it works good but if there are any problems I'll post it.

 

[robmurphy]

You need to check what the onboard Gigabit chipsets support i.e. jumbo frame and jumbo frame size. Given that they are Nvida they should be quite good, but you do need to check this. If you have dual connections on both machines you could just link them with a CAT5E or above cable, there are no crossover worries with gigabit.

I do not know about vista, but XP SP2 is causing me real pain and this may be the case for vista. There are many tips posted for Win2K and XP, but they do not work on XP SP2 so it very unlikely they will work on Vista

Iperf is free and good for finding out what the limit of the network is. You could use this with a cable linking the 2 machines and see what you get, and then put the switch in the path, and see if it reduces the overal speed. Check out the TCP window and jumbo frame sizes and what effect they have. You can also use this method to get the best CPU usage/bandwidth compromise. On my machines to get the best network bandwidth I have to turn off Interrupt moderation but the cpu occupancy jumps to about 50% on X2 4600. The cards on my system on on the plain old PCI bus as I did not have a spare PCIE, so this may not give you the same problems.

On the switch side I have a Netgear GS608 which seems OK, and it supports jumbo frames upto 9000 bytes. Dell in the UK have an offer on their power connect switches witch are web mannaged. The 8 port version does not support jumbo frames (at least according to the website) but the 16 port and above do. At present on the UK site the 16 port switch is cheaper than the 8 port switch. The power connect range appear to support link aggregation so that may work with the teaming feature on the Nivida motherboards. I cannot access the US Dell website so cannot check out the offers there.

The router should not cause you any problems as the Gigbit traffic should stay on the switch. I would not use the small 4 port switch on the routers for your gigabit network.


That just my 2ps worth

 

[MerlinRML]

So with a STR of 150MB/sec, you've got to have 2 disks in RAID 0 doing about 75MB/sec each. Just so you know, you won't be able to sustain that as the disks get full or have to move data to other portions of the platter. You'll see drops in performance depending on where you're accessing the disk, and you'll probably average closer to 120-130MB/sec. So you're going to be able to fill a single gigabit connection, but not much more than that. You'll have to decide if teaming is going to be really useful.

Assuming that you can get your teaming to work, it would separate the overhead between 2 connections nicely and you would see some small benefit, but not as much as if you could push more data from the host. Whenever I was doing performance testing, I always found it easier to add another host to generate more data than I did pushing a single host just a little bit faster by doing complex configuration.

As for your protocol, CIFS/SMB is not that great, but it's everywhere in the Windows world and easily added with Samba in the linux world. That's why it's nice - convenience. You could use FTP if you wanted something lighter weight.

I don't know if iSCSI would work for what you're trying to do. I've used it, and it seemed to work relatively well. But it would make your HTPC's storage a block device on your workstation. So to access that device locally from the HTPC, you'd have to go through the iSCSI stack, which would probably add overhead to accessing the storage locally. Not to mention all the potential problems with sharing the block level storage devices between 2 machines simultaneously. It may work, but I don't think this is a good fit for what you're trying to do.

Personally, I would just setup a cron job (oops sorry. it's a task in windows land) to run robocopy every hour which would sync both your boxes. That way, unless you're literally generating data that you must have ASAP, you'll always have your data moving to the HTPC faster than you can fill the disk on your workstation.