[Info-vax] DE500 and hardware version

[Paul Sture]

In article <kc6gav$252$1 at online.de>,
 helbig at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---undress to reply) 
 wrote:

> In article <nospam-82F7A9.12110404012013 at news.chingola.ch>, Paul Sture
> <nospam at sture.ch> writes: 
> 
> > I was looking to upgrade my home network to Gigabit ethernet just over a 
> > year ago and was surprised how much kit in the marketplace was still 
> > 10/100.  Basically unless Gigabit or 1000 was somewhere in the product 
> > name or prominent in the description, 10/100 was what you would be 
> > getting.
> 
> Well, consider that the typical home user doesn't run a LAN-based VMS 
> cluster.  :-|  

Not a VMS cluster, but every PC sold in the last few years (3-4 years?) 
has come with GbE, and there are a lot of NAS and media streaming 
devices on the market.

> Most DSL connections are not more than 16 Mb/s, and most 
> people essentially connect one device to the internet. 

My cable company currently offers up to 100,000 Kbit/s down, 7,000 
Kbit/s up:

http://www.upc-cablecom.ch/en/b2c/internet.htm

and see the TV/internet/phone packages here:

http://www.upc-cablecom.ch/en/b2c/kombiangebote.htm

The "Top Deal" there is very little more than my current cost for a 
25,000 Kbit/s internet and digital TV package.  In essence I would get a 
4 times speed boost plus free telephone calls to land lines in 
Switzerland.

> So, the 
> bottleneck is the WAN connection; 100 Mb/s on the LAN is thus more than 
> enough.  For people with several devices on the LAN who also transfer 
> big files between them then, yes, Gb/s at home would make sense.

Back to NAS and media streaming, though many folks will use wireless 
networking instead.
 
> I picked up an old, big (32-port), 10/100, originally quite expensive 
> switch a few years ago when to replace the 10 MB/S hub I had been using.
> It died a couple of years later and I bought a new NetGear 10/100/1000 
> switch for EUR 30 or whatever.  Seems to work fine.  Apart from my 3 
> (sometimes 4 when I boot the satellite upstairs) nodes in my VMS cluster 
> there is an access point which my wife uses for her iPad.  IIRC the WLAN 
> speed is a few hundred MB/s but, again, the main bottleneck is the DSL 
> connection.  Connections between the iPad and the VMS cluster are 
> limited, though my wife does use the VT220 app to check email on the VMS 
> cluster.  :-)  Since she can't type at 100 MB/s, we really don't need 
> much more speed between iPad and VMS.

Understood, but a lot of GbE capable kit is already out there.  It seems 
a shame to cripple it with 10/100 routers and switches.

-- 
Paul Sture