Network speeds are ever increasing and have been doing a good job for the most part keeping up with other computer technologies. 1000BASE-T, commonly refered to as “gigabit Ethernet” is approximately 10 times faster than 100BASE-T which has been used for years now. The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) defines standards for electronics, computer, information, and other technologies. Within the IEEE is the 802.3 Working Group which develops standards for CSMA/CD (Ethernet) based LANs. The standard for gigabit Ethernet (802.3z) was approved by the IEEE at the July 1998 at the IEEE Standards Board meeting. However the 1000 Mb/s Ethernet over installed copper and fiber cabling infrastructure was not approved until June 1999 by the IEEE.
Is gigabit right for me?
In most cases a 100BASE-T LAN will be sufficient; however there are benefits to having a gigabit LAN setup. If you do a lot of large file transfers within your network gigabit is something you will appreciate. I don’t know how many times I have started to transfer large files (5-10GB) and had to wait quite a while for them to finish transferring. Gigabit is also particularly favorable in a server environment where a lot of client to server or server to server action takes place. Bottlenecks on a network can be both hardware and network oriented, and for a long time the network end of it was stuck with 100BASE-T. Unless you wanted to fork over the money to use fiber optics. If you are thinking about upgrading to gigabit to get a better ping for gaming at LAN parties I’m going to have to let you down. The speed of a 100BASE-T LAN is more than sufficient to keep you ping low enough (5-15ms) so that you won’t experience any lag. Gigabit isn’t going to offer you anything noticeable during gaming so you might be better off sticking with your 100BASE-T setup.
What will I need for gigabit
Until recently gigabit was too expensive for the average home user who wanted to setup a small LAN. However because of the technology improving the cost to the consumer has slowly been dropping. Just about all of the networking companies are selling gigabit switches and network cards at reasonable prices that are not much more than your standard 10/100 equipment. There are however different types of switches and network cards that will affect the overall cost of that item. To successfully setup a gigabit network you will need a 1000BASE-T switch, a 1000BASE-T NIC (Network Interface Card) in each computer you want to have gigabit, and cat 5e or cat 6 patch cables. The great thing about gigabit over copper is that it is backwards compatible with 10BASE-T and 100BASE-T standards. This means that you can have a mix of 10/100/1000BASE-T systems operating on the same network.
What’s the difference between cat 5e and cat 6?
Simply put cat 5e runs at 100MHz while cat 6 runs at 250MHz. Both cat 5e and cat 6 have a maximum length of 100 meters or 328 feet. Runs longer than this will case the signal to attenuate and can cause problems. There other technical differences between the two obviously, however my knowledge in electronics is not strong enough to go into detail on these. Originally gigabit required fiber optics to operate which was and still is very expensive. Because of this few people and companies went this route unless they had a lot of money or a huge need for faster speeds. With the adoption of gigabit over copper into the IEEE things have totally changed. Like I mentioned in the previous section you are able to run gigabit over your current cat 5e patch cables without the need to upgrade. This is a huge money saver for companies who would otherwise spend thousands of dollars replacing their cables to cat 6.
The switch and NICs from SMC have similar box designs and have been the same for years now which is fine. The front of all the boxes has basic information about the hardware and the back has a basic network diagram.
The front and back of the switch looks pretty similar to most other switches, and basically identical to other SMC 5 port switches. The biggest, and possibly only difference with this switch is the 1000M LEDs on the front. The switch is also pretty large in comparison to other 5 port switches which can be much smaller. The main reason it is larger is so that it can be rackmounted.
Because this switch is designed so that it can be rackmounted there are holes on the side for you to mount the brackets to. If you are going to use this switch in a rackmount environment it’s perfect and would be a nice addition of course. You also get 4 rubber feet if you are not going to put it into a rack. These will keep the switch in place and prevent your surface from being scratched.
The network cards provided to compliment the switch are SMC’s EZ Card 1000 (SMC9452TX). This card is a 32-bit 10/100/1000Mbps PCI card which makes it backwards compatible with your current 10/100 Ethernet network. The back of the card is almost identical to every other 10/100 NIC however because this is a gigabit NIC there is a 1000 LED to indicate the 1000Mbps speed.
This network card (left) uses a Marvell 88E8003 32-Bit Gigabit Ethernet Controller for Network Adapters. This integrated device combines the Marvell Alaska transceiver and a gigabit Ethernet Media Access Controller (MAC), with a 32-bit PCI interface and 128 KB packet buffer. Within the switch (right) are 5 single-port Marvell Alaska 88E1111 transceivers that perform all of the physical layer functions. There is a large F3 FSG5 chip which is a 5 port switching fabric with an embedded packet memory. This F3 chip FSG5/8 has an internal packet buffer memory of 768 Kbits in size and an address database memory that may hold up to 8K unicast addresses.
While cat 5e is capable of gigabit transmission I picked up some cat 6 cables from Newegg. I did this because the cost of cat 6 was only 50 cents more than Cat 5e and figured why not. If you currently have some good cat 5e patch cables then you won’t need to buy new ones, unless you want to. I tested this SMC gigabit switch against a Netgear 5-port fast Ethernet witch (model FS605). For the testing I disconnected both computers from the router and put both on the switches without anything else. I created 100MB, 500MB and 1000MB files with a small program called Dummyfile to use for the testing. I then created a share on one computer and transferred the files from one to the other. All of the speed and time calculations were acquired with DU Meter which was running during the testing. All of the numbers below for the transfer times are in mB/sec.
Just as a side note my systems are typical desktops and not servers therefore the PCI bus and hard disks will likely be a bottle neck. With high end servers 64-bit PCI, PCI-X, and PCI Express will provide a much faster bus that alleviates the bottleneck. Also NICs that have direct connections to the northbridge these bottlenecks are greatly reduced.
| Testbed 1 | Testbed 2 | |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte K8NS Pro | Albatron KM18G Pro |
| Processor | AMD Athlon 64 3200+ | AMD Athlon XP 1800+ |
| Memory | Corsair 1024MB PC3200 | PMI 512MB PC3200 |
| Video Card | ATi X800 Pro video card | Onboard video |
| Power Supply | Vantec Stealth 470w PSU | AGI 300w PSU |
| Optical Drive | Plextor PX-708A | Plextor PX-504A |
| Har Drive | 60GB Seagate Barracuda IV | 30GB Seagate Barracuda IV |
| Network Card | Onboard gigabit NIC | SMC EZ Card 1000 (SMC9452TX) |
With the 100MB file the gigabit switch doubled the transfer rate for both the average and maximum speeds.
During the testing of the 500MB file the average transfer time was a little less than doubled like the 100MB file. However the maximum transfer speeds was more than doubled when compared to the 10/100 switch.
Moving on to the 1000MB (1GB) file the average transfer rate is very close with both the Netgear and SMC switch. However with the maximum transfer rate the SMC is just about 3 times faster than the Netgear.
Transfer rates are important and will obviously determine the amount of time the transfer will take. So of course we are all going to want to know how much faster is this going to make things and how long will I have to wait. So for each of the three files tested above I also timed them for comparison. All of the times were recorded in seconds and should be accurate within a few seconds. With the 100MB file the time is cut in half from 10 seconds to 5 seconds, both very small amounts of time that you probably won’t notice too much. With the 500MB file you will be able to transfer the file 24 seconds faster than 100Mbps and take you a total of 28 seconds rather than 52 seconds. With the 1000MB (1GB) file you won’t see as much of a difference. The gigabit switch was 24 seconds faster just like the 500MB file was. So with a large file transfer like this you wont notice much.
Lower is better
Conclusion
In this fast paced world these days everyone wants everything right away. People are less patient and hate the thought of delayed gratification. I don’t mean to offend anyone but its true, and I am guilty of it as well.
I know I have sat at work and home watching a file transfer going thinking to myself, “Will you hurry up I want to go home.” If you have a server environment where you would like to reduce a network bottle neck or simply want the newest fastest technology this should do the job. However if you are running a small home LAN or could care less about saving time then you probably should wait for 10 gigabit networking equipment.
However both of these are just personal preferences so from a product perspective I don’t see anything negative about these products. Of course your are going to pay more than you would for 10/100 hardware however that’s the way its going to be with any new technology.
Overall I am impressed with these SMC products and gigabit over copper in general. Because of that I am going to give all these products a 10/10 and the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would like to thank SMC for making this article possible.
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