Networking Questions

EricM

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I kind of know only the basics about networking... but I recently did more research about network cabling and discovered a lot more to networking I never knew. So to start off i have a few questions about Gigabit ethernet... The lan on my mobo supports it, but i only have a 10/100mbps router... this means that the router is only capale of transmitting 10mpbs or 100 mpbs over the ethernet cable right?? What would determine which it would use? whichever lan card u have on your pc?? Would the bandwidth speed of coming into your modem (cable,dsl, etc) effect the results of using 802.3ab (1000BASE-T) standards?

And lastly what is the main difference between cat5e and cat6... i researched it a bit and found that cat6 has higher bandwidth. Thanks in advance for any help.
 
EricM said:
I kind of know only the basics about networking... but I recently did more research about network cabling and discovered a lot more to networking I never knew. So to start off i have a few questions about Gigabit ethernet... The lan on my mobo supports it, but i only have a 10/100mbps router... this means that the router is only capale of transmitting 10mpbs or 100 mpbs over the ethernet cable right?? What would determine which it would use? whichever lan card u have on your pc?? Would the bandwidth speed of coming into your modem (cable,dsl, etc) effect the results of using 802.3ab (1000BASE-T) standards?

And lastly what is the main difference between cat5e and cat6... i researched it a bit and found that cat6 has higher bandwidth. Thanks in advance for any help.

Yes your router is only capable of transmitting 100 meg over the wires. The slowest device sets the speed for a link, so a 10 meg hub and a 100 meg nic, the hub would set the link to run at 10 meg.

And yes for internet communications (LAN TO WAN) the bandwidth coming into your modem (Your DSL or Cable ISP) is all what really matters.

Baiscly with your current wiring unless you do alot of PC to PC transfers on your network, your cabling is sufficent and you would see abosuletly NO difference if you upgraded it.
 
So what about upgrading to a 1000mbps router... would i see an increase in performance at all? Right now I have 100mbps
 
EricM said:
So what about upgrading to a 1000mbps router... would i see an increase in performance at all? Right now I have 100mbps

Not at all as your router may be 1000mbps, but however your internet connection is likely 5mbps.

+ I highly doubt you are getting a 1000mbps router for under a grand.
 
DJ-CHRIS said:
Not at all as your router may be 1000mbps, but however your internet connection is likely 5mbps.

+ I highly doubt you are getting a 1000mbps router for under a grand.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833127060


Thats 10/100/1000 and only 108 dollars???

and you are right my download speed is only 5mbps... but my internet provider claims its up to 16mbps??? Soo basically if youre download speed is 5mbps coming into your modem....then basically 1000mbps on the lan... even 100mpbs is extremely useless???? I am a bit confused to how that works.
 
basically...

your router is running at 100mbps, so your network card runs at 100mbps, and any other device that is on your network runs at 100mbps.

so if you have two computers, you can transfer files between them at 100mbps.

your internet speed is 5mbps, so no matter how fast information can be sent and recieved by your computer you can only download information from the internet at 5mbps.

the reason that routers are 100mbps rather than 5, is so that you can quickly transfer stuff between the computers in your home.
 
EricM said:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833127060


Thats 10/100/1000 and only 108 dollars???

and you are right my download speed is only 5mbps... but my internet provider claims its up to 16mbps??? Soo basically if youre download speed is 5mbps coming into your modem....then basically 1000mbps on the lan... even 100mpbs is extremely useless???? I am a bit confused to how that works.

You may get 1000mbps for your LAN to LAN transfers on that router, however the WAN (Internet) port is only 100 meg.

Also this may confuse you more, but just because something says it's 100 meg or so doesn't mean that it will really peform that fast. For example I would expect 40-50 meg routing peformance on that router.
 
a good reason to upgrade your lan to a gig network is if you have a video server and share it out to multiple roommates...however, from my experience, having a 100Meg lan was more than enough with two roommates
 
Oh ok so this makes sense now. So it is pointless then if you do not even really do any lan transfer with other computers on your lan.... soo basically youre limited by your wan transfer speed. and lastly my last question about cat5e and cat6...would the bandwidth increase be noticeable?
 
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