On Feb 26, 12:27 pm, John McGaw wrote:
EdwardATeller wrote:
On Feb 25, 4:47 pm, pcbldrNinetyEight pcbldrninetyeight.com wrote:
EdwardATeller wrote in news:1c2b06f7-e563-499f-
:

I just bought two NetGear GA311 GigaBit PCI adapters and a NetGear
GS605 GigaBit Ethernet Switch. I have two computers with the PCI
cards in them connected through my home network into the GS605. Much
of my network is wired into the walls. I'm pretty sure I am not
getting gigabit transfer speeds, and the NetGear utility is reporting
the speed as 100M/Full. The 1000 light is not lit up on the back of
the card.
Is it possible for the cards to detect lower quality cables, and
downshift to 100M speeds?
Test your equipment by connecting it together directly with cat5e patch
cables capable of Gigabit speeds. Available hehttp://www.cyberguys.com/templates/S...categoryID=132

--
pcbldrNinetyEight

Thanks for the quick replies. I did have a bad cable, which I
replaced, and now I am running at full speed. One thing I learned is
that sometimes I had to power cycle the switch for it to recognize a
better cable.

It isn't as fast as I thought it would be. I have my old router
plugged into the gigabit switch for internet access, and that
connection lights up as 100. Maybe that slows the whole switch down.
I'll do some testing when I have more time.

Bottom line, make sure you have good cables. Also, don't have your
switch in the basement and computers on the 2nd floor unless you want
some serious exercise.

No, the router won't affect the overall speed of the network -- that is
one of the advantages of a switch. Computers capable of gigabit speed
will communicate at some mutually-agreed speed up to the limit among
themselves while the internet connection will happen at either 10 or 100
depending on the setup. But since the internet connection will never be
very fast (relatively speaking) this is of no matter.

You can verify for yourself that the router doesn't affect speeds
between computers by testing speed with it connected to the switch and
without it. Oh, btw, you will probably never seen anything like true
gigabit transfers despite the name unless your network has proper CAT-6
wiring done perfectly. And probably not even then. I consider myself
lucky when I manage 50mB/s (500mb/s, or half-gigabit) transfers over my
CAT-5e wiring.

--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]http://johnmcgaw.com

I spent some time testing my network, and you are exactly right.
Having the router plugged into the switch did not affect transfer
speeds between the gigabit-enabled computers. You are also right
about not coming close to gigabit transfer speeds. I moved a file,
listed by Windows as 2,189,264 KB, for the test. It took 215 seconds
using the gigabit adapters, and it took 267 seconds using the T100
adapters. That is less than a 20% improvement, so I am taking the
equipment back to the store. I guess I was thinking it would be 10
times faster, which would be worth it, but a small improvement like
that is not.

Maybe I could buy new cables and improve the situation, but much of
the cable run is behind drywall, so I will just be a little patient
while the files transfer and save a few bucks. Thanks for the help.