PC Routers

[James Knott]

Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 10:00:26PM -0500, James Knott wrote:
>> Unless your Internet connection is greater than 100 Mb, gigabit
>> won't give you much.
> It will between the local PCs connected through the switch.
>

I thought my comments were about that board mentioned in a previous 
message.  It has two ports, one for the Internet side and the other, the 
local network.  If you connect more than one computer to it, you will 
need a separate switch.  Since each switch port is completely 
independent of the others, it can run at any supported speed.  However, 
the internet connection is limited to whatever your ISP provides.  So, 
if you have a Gb switch connecting your LAN, any Gb capable devices will 
be able to operate among themselves at that rate.  Having a 100 Mb 
device (that router board) connected will not affect that traffic.  On 
the other hand, any traffic going to/from the Internet will be limited 
to whatever your ISP & the net allows.  As I mentioned, switches are 
quite different from the old hubs and coax networks, where everything 
had to run at the same speed.  With a switch, you should be able to 
transparently run any mix of speed and even half/full duplex, with 
throughput limited only by the characteristics of the individual devices 
connected to the switch.

So, getting back to that board, you can connect it to a Gb switch and 
that one switch port will run at 100 Mb, while all the other ports can 
run at 1 Gb.  Even then, the actual throughput to the Internet will 
depend on the ISP and beyond.




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