Question

What impact does a gigabit port on a switch have in a multiple-switch topology?

Asked by: MadManse

Assume the following simple network:

one router
three 24-port switches
70 PCs

Assuming all 70 PCs have 10/100 NICs, here are my questions:

1. If the router has only one LAN port--no matter what its speed--then I would have to daisy chain the three switches with crossover cables. This necessarily means that the PC connected to the 2nd switch would suffer some performance loss because the traffic to them would have to get through the first switch first, and PCs in connected to the 3rd switch would suffer even more.  Is this right?

2. To correct the problem, connecting the router to a new switch and connection the original 3 switches to the new one should give all PCs a fairly even response time, right?

3. Keeping in mind that a network is only as fast as its slowest device, would there be ANY performance iimpact if all router and switch ports were 10/100/1000?

Thanks in advance for your comments...

Peter

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Asked On
2008-07-01 at 13:23:28ID23531548
Tags

Connecting multiple switches

Topics

Miscellaneous Networking

,

Network Design & Methodology

,

Networking Hardware

Participating Experts
2
Points
125
Comments
2

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Answers

 

by: brakk0Posted on 2008-07-01 at 14:29:37ID: 21911798

With your current hardware, (assuming your current switches are also 10/100) I would connect one switch to the router and the other two switches to that switch directly (they don't have to be dasy chained all in one line). Then, also assuming your internet connection is less than 100M, you probably won't see any difference in speed between workstations on each switch. This is essentially what you are suggesting in #2, but you don't need to buy any more hardware since I doubt your internet connection is anywhere near 100M.

Even though your switches are 10/100, each switch can internally handle a lot more than 100M of traffic, it's just that each port is limited to 100M. So, when you connect your switches together through one of the 100M ports that creates a bottleneck so that the traffic between switches is limited to 100M. By connecting them in a "Y" as described above, you get two 100M ports to the switch with the router instead of just one and it will be a lot more efficient. I would also put any servers on the central switch to allow faster access from workstations.

This is why some switches have 1000M uplink ports for joining switches together.

I'm not sure what you mean by #3, but changing out your switches to gig switches would have no impact on your internet connection. Going to gig switches or 10/100 switches with gig uplink ports might help internal traffic depending on what internal services you are running.

Hope this makes sense.

 

by: Kolyan2003Posted on 2008-07-01 at 14:33:32ID: 21911818

It all depends how much traffic goes through that router; if it's a internet gateway, then how much bandwidth is available; and what kind/ what amount traffic between office PC's

1. Thats right, but it will be unsignificant difference, if you're not running very traffic sensitive applications.
2. This setup will create additional latency; in case of daisy-chaining one switch will have 1 bridge hop to gateway, second will have 2, thrid will have 3 hops.  I would do a star - plug your router into one switch and plug other two into that switch.
3. gigabit uplinks will make a difference only in case if you havea lot of traffic between office pc's or you will have a lot of traffic going through the router.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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