Help needed for setting up Gigabit network

L31mr0d

Ok, i'm going to be setting up a wired network between 2 PCs for the the moment. Both of them have gigabit capable NICs integrated.

I have a DSL router from BT (ZyXEL) with one ethernet port, my main PC has 2 built in Gigabit NICs and my secondary PC only has 1.

What I was first thinking of doing was connecting both the PCs and the DSL router into an 8port hub I have lying about. But it's only 10/100.

I thought then that I could connect both PCs together directly using a crossover cable, and then feed through the broadband through the second NIC on my main PC to the secondary one. But I don't know if this would even work and I don't like that I will always have to have my main PC on when I want to get access to the internet on my secondary PC.

So I need advice, would the above set up work? Also, is there any special cabling I need to support a gigabit network? What would be the best 8-port Gigabit hub to get?

Cake Fiend

How often are you going to need the full bandwidth between the two PCs? 100Mb half-dup is going to be fine for the vast majority of purposes - maybe you could keep a Cat5e/6 crossover cable around for the times you'll need a fast transfer (e.g. very large files)?

Another solution might be to buy a second (cheap 10/100) nic for the secondary PC to use for internet access (leaving the gig nic free for direct connection to the main PC) so you wouldn't need to keep the main PC on all the time.

L31mr0d

more often than not. I tend to not use DVD's or CD's but rather rip any music, software, games to ISO's as soon as i buy them then store the Disks in case the ISOs become corrupted. So i'm usually moving files larger than 4GB's between PCs. Moving 4GB's+ over a 10/100 network takes a long time.

Anyway, I bought some cat 6 cables from maplins and a gigabit switch from PC World. So all is good.

_CreeD_

I know you put this to rest. Just in case someone else ends up in the same boat and searches, Cat5e will handle gigabit fine (and should be cheaper). In this case it would have been cheaper, and as effective, to get the recommended 2nd 100mb NIC and place it in the other PC, connect a gigabit interface directly between each PC with a Cat5e crossover cable, and if you didn't want to play with interface metrics just assign both to a separate subnet then map drives between them using their IP addresses specific to this new subnet.

L31mr0d

thought i'd mention that the only reason I went with cat 6 is because I have the 10m network cable running alongside a number of wireless devices, powerlines, audio lines etc, and I wanted the extra confidence that the signal would not be interfered with. cat 5e is more than enough for gigabit ethernet, but after being the victim of consistant crc's on files I used to send across the network i've learnt to not skimp on good cabling.

I now have the gigabit ethernet in place. I tested sending a 4GB rar archive across the network and back again and it took less than 2 minutes each way with no crc's at either end. In comparison, copying a 4GB archive from my external firewire 400 HDD takes around 5 minutes one way.

Capt'n Midnight

Cake Fiend wrote:

maybe you could keep a Cat5e/6 crossover cable around for the times you'll need a fast transfer (e.g. very large files)?

Another solution might be to buy a second (cheap 10/100) nic for the secondary PC to use for internet access (leaving the gig nic free for direct connection to the main PC) so you wouldn't need to keep the main PC on all the time.

with gigabit a straight through cable would work for gigabit

have two NIC's in each pc
one for internet
one for sharing - this one setup with a static address and NO gateway or DNS
eg: 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 , to connect to the other PC just use the ip address and create shortcuts or map drive letters
\\10.0.0.1\sharename
you could also turn off the firewall on these nics since no gateway or internet connection means they should be relatively safe.

L31mr0d

been working away with the gigabit ethernet for about a week and I can say it was well worth the money. I moved over 100GB over to my fileserver/HTPC in under an hour. I also use it now for VNC'ing into each PC. I can have the resolution at max with the wallpaper on and all the XP effects enabled and there's no slowdown, compared to VNC on my work 10/100 network this is excellent. I'm going to be adding a 1TB NAS to the network in the next few weeks also, as the firewire external drive I have is slow now in comparison.

very happy with this setup.

Cake Fiend

L31mr0d wrote:

compared to VNC on my work 10/100 network this is excellent.

O/T, but it sounds like there's a misconfiguration on your work network. 100MB/s FD should be loads for VNC, you shouldn't notice any difference between 100MB/s and 1GB/s. Either your network is congested, or your NIC is negotiating at a lower speed/duplex setting than it should be.

layke

_CreeD_ wrote:

ICat5e will handle gigabit fine (and should be cheaper

Just to note, it will work BUT it's no recommended. GB Ethernet works by using special architecture what can unscramble a signal once it terminates at the end of the cable. The problem is Cat 5e can screw up that termination causing you to get a degraded signal.

That said anyone I know who has a GB network just uses Cat6, so I don't know how often that problem occurs or if it only happens when your using the full 500MB throughput.

Capt'n Midnight

Cat 5 will handle Gigabit if it's put in properly and you use good link cables. If you are still using the cables from when the Cat5 was originally installed what do you expect ? If the run is short you should manage, if it's linking two machines with one cable then you don't have as many losses on joints