Recommended switch?

[r3b00+]

Our company infrastructure consists of 30 pc's (xp pro sp2), 5 servers(w2k3 sp2), 2 switches 10/100 and 1 router.
Ive only started here and have noticed the network is very slow.
Short of ripping out the wiring and starting from scratch, would new switches speed this up? If so could anyone recommend any?

Thanks all in advance

[Aardpsymon]

well, depends. if your workstations are on 10Mbps then yes, pretty much any 100Mbps switch will help. We binned our 10/100Mbps switches last year and now have 100/1000Mbps or just plain 1000Mbps switches.

Of course, depending what sort of state the wiring is in you may have to rip that out to see the benefit of new switches. I don't think older cat cables will carry gigabit speeds properly.

[r3b00+]

The pc's are operating at 100mbps. Would a 100/1000mbps switch improve the overall speed? If so, roughly by what percentage?

Ripping out the wiring is not a viable option at this moment in time!

[thehorse13]

Before you spend a dime, get a friend in there with a fluke meter to determine the line speed of your wiring. Having CAT3 in the walls isn't going to be a good thing to find out *after* you buy a 1G switch.

Call me a sell out but when it comes to routing hardware, Cisco always gets my vote though I have to say that Juniper has some excellent offerings now too.

--Th13

[r3b00+]

Sell Out!

The cables are cat5 so i think im gonna get me a new switch.

Thanks all for the advice.

[Aardpsymon]

What IS the difference between CAT3/5/6 etc? is it just quality of manufacture or what?

[Net2Infinity]

Gigabit for normal workstations is overkill as a machine doesnt have enough throughput to saturate the link. In addition you need at least 5e for 100mb. You should try to isolate the bottlenecks before throwing gear at the problem. Perhaps the issue is a slow file server, or an over utilized internet connection. I would recommend a Cisco 2960-48-TT, it should cost around 1600.

[thehorse13]

What IS the difference between CAT3/5/6 etc? is it just quality of manufacture or what?

Data transfer rates is the key difference. Have a look at the IEEE standards page for more info.

Gigabit for normal workstations is overkill as a machine doesnt have enough throughput to saturate the link. In addition you need at least 5e for 100mb. You should try to isolate the bottlenecks before throwing gear at the problem.

Exactly my point. Invest some time with a fluke meter to determine what's going on before throwing money at expensive gear.

--TH13

[r3b00+]

Im learning as i go here. This is my first admin job.
Ive decided to have a look at ethereal to try and isolate the bottleneck(s).
Ive never used it so doing a lot of cramming on the documentation.
Theres an old 10mbps switch in the closet that i know isnt doing the network any good, so im gonna replace this with a 100mbps switch with a few 1000mbps ports for heavily used servers.
I used a program called netcps and found the transfer rate on the network range from 1-3mbps.

Thanks all for the advice again, priceless!

[thehorse13]

If this is your first admin job then perhaps you should think about proper segmentation of your network. Place your servers on a backbone segment capable of say 1G, while having workstations on 100mbps segments. I mean if you're going to invest in new gear here, you may as well architect the network properly while you're at it.

Enjoy!