Question about Gigabit Ethernet LAN

I was wondering what the problem is that needs addressing?

If occasional file transfer then a direct connection to the PC is possible.

If something else or longer term regular file transfer then look at the switch.

For music play gb isn’t needed.

The problem was Hmack’s bulk file transfer which was taking a long time, nothing to do with music streaming.

This thread has remind me I need to move on my 2 blue 2960s they are just doing nothing in the attic.

You can download the Cisco Network Assistant, which is a Windows based app that will let you see, and change, the config on your switch. Probably an idea to try that before spending any money on alternate switches.

You need to right click the network assistant and select “Run as administrator” on the PC.

Assuming you’ve not reset the passwords on the switch you should be able to get in with username “cisco” and password “cisco” (if I remember correctly).

(By the way my Gigabit 2960s are blue so colour isn’t a reliable way to rule out blue units being gigabit)

Yes - I certainly haven’t had any issues with music streaming in all the years I’ve used local music streaming or external music streaming services, other than a specific minor issue related to intermittent missing Roon metadata when running Roon Radio. That is very possibly DNS related, but certainly nothing to do with my home network file transfer rate.

I think it’s obvious that the 8 ports on my 2960s are rated at 100 Mbps, and having thought things through via this thread I’m not inclined to be concerned about this.

Thanks to everyone who has responded to my post.

It sounds like it could be related to a combination of the protocol used for the file transfer and the Ethernet frame size.
You could look at enabling Jumbo frames on your LAN to improve the throughput, the sector size on your NAS drive can also play a part in the transfer speed especially for write cycles of small files.
If you’re transferring lots of smaller files, like individual audio tracks as an example, the overheads of the read, encapsulation and transport all play a part on the impact of the overall performance of the network.
No harm trying out enabling increasing the MTU on the source/destination devices to 9000, it’ll likely be set to 1500 currently.
Search for Synology Jumbo Frame or similar for guidance.
You may want to do some reading on the OSI Model as well to familiarise yourself with the dependant layers and their effect on each other and the overall performance of the network. Gigabit is just the interface throughput at the physical layer, what sits above that through layer 7 determines the actual speed of the network.

The problem was that I unexpectedly discovered that the transfer rates I was getting on my home network were limited to ‘fast’ ethernet rates, and wondered why. I had wrongly assumed that the ports on my Cisco switches would support gigabit transfer rates.

As you summarise in your post, there is no longer a problem that needs addressing. ‘Fast’ ethernet is sufficient for my current home network usage, and now that I am aware of the reason why I don’t get gigabit transfer rates I no longer have any concerns about my network.

Did you try to copy files using WIFI (as a test)? Normally, a home user does not need to do anything.

You’ll probably find using SMB (SMB3 if supported) transferred over wired Ethernet will give you the fastest transfer speed.
If it’s a Synology NAS, ensure SMB3 is set for maximum supported and enable opportunistic locking and remove the transport encryption if it’s on, that should ensure it negotiates the best transfer and removes any unwanted encapsulation overheads.
The actual read and write maximum speeds are determined by the NAS drives and their data interfaces (SATA/PCIe) rather than the network interface of the NAS. So unless the NAS has solid state flash based storage connected over a PCIe bus, it’s never going to get anywhere near gigabit transfer speeds.
You can add a smaller flash based write cache drive to help out if the NAS hardware supports it.

I do not recommend farting around with jumbo frames, you’ll likely kill your network. You have identified its probably the cisco switches, which with due respect you probably got because someone here said they ‘sounded’ better. This is obviously patent audiophile nonsense.

It then comes down to what you want to spend, but even the most basic gigabit switch will net you circa 100MB/s down. Bear in mind that if you have any raid configs going on then writing to it can take time. This may be the case for your nas. However I would still be expecting circa 60MB/s. Also bear in mind that lots of bitty files such as hundreds of music files again will be slower than say one large 4GB film or what ever.

Again though you should still be enjoying way more than 10MB/s. So basically bin the ancient switches.

Someone up thread said they had to replace cheap switches every 2 years. I can honestly say I have never had this, the only swicth I had fail was a cisco!

That being said like anything you pays your money. If you want more control or are interested in network topology (You seem to be with your fancy graphs) then consider something managed, or even Ubiquity/unifi.

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FWIW I run my whole network at 100MB. It’s plenty for my needs, much faster than my internet connection, and uses a bit less power.

Hey thats great, I store a lot of work files etc to network with a lot of too and fro, for me my network is not simply about streaming music. I need 1gig and would like 10gig but cannot justify that lol.

I suspect that there is not much respect included in this comment. That is usually the case when someone begins a statement in this way.

For what it is worth I purchased my first Cisco 2960 when I needed an extra port in one of my two 4 port TP-Link consumer switches. I looked at the second hand price of a Cisco 2960 (which had started making the rounds on this forum) on Ebay vs a new larger TP-Link switch, and to my surprise the Cisco switch was slightly cheaper. I had absolutely no expectation of any audible effect on my music system. I did of course out of curiosity test whether or not it made a difference of any sort to the sound quality of my attached music streamer, but in line with my expectations I could not detect any discernible difference.

I bought my 2nd Cisco 2960 switch when I ran out of ports in my other room. I opted for Cisco again because my first experience with their product had been a good one. Absolutely nothing to do with the possibility of it “sounding better”.

I don’t need a Gigabit home network for what I do on my network. As I have already stated, my original post was as much down to curiosity as anything else. I have found the answer and my curiosity has been sated. No need for any further action.

As I mentioned above, I am getting approximately 10 MB/s (or 80 Mbps) which is roughly what I would expect from a switch with ports rated at 10/100 Mbps. It’s maybe not the absolute maximum throughput but not far short and good enough for my needs 95% of the time.

I won’t bin the 2960s just yet!

I understand now. I also understand the wish to have everything working as expected. I have been known to obsess about these things for no other reason than wanting something to work as intended, whether it makes a difference or not. I recently had fibre installed to the property and just ‘had’ to improve the internal wifi net because I could. :slight_smile:

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I’m a bit like this myself. I’m retired now, but spent my entire career working in IT and so have got used to requiring everything to be ‘just right’.

I hasten to add I was not a network specialist - far from it! Management of and tinkering with networks always was and still is a bit of a dark magic area as far as I am concerned! Luckily, I worked alongside and with some pretty good network specialists.

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Ex IT PM here. Logic and perfection are my bugbears. :rofl:

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Although I do not know @garyi personally, but I always respect his posts, his technical advices are always excellent, full of insights, and he does not mind to mince his words. :slight_smile:

@james_n …slightly off topic, but I remember reading that you managed to get the ADOT fibre kit up and running with your Cisco switch by finding a suitable SFP adapter for the Cisco? I’m trying the ADOT at the moment and have a Cisco switch. I would be very appreciative if you would advise how you found the right SFP and whether it was easy to setup? Looks like a neater solution with one less link in the chain too. Thanks.

Hi Jason - this is the SFP module I used (in lieu of a genuine Cisco module). It was just plug and play with the Cisco recognising it without any reconfiguration needed. Bought via the StarTech shop on Amazon

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