[Info-vax] DE500 and hardware version

[John Wallace]

On Jan 4, 12:59 pm, Paul Sture <nos... at sture.ch> wrote:
> In article <kc6gav$25... at online.de>,
>  hel... at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---undress to reply)
>
>  wrote:
> > In article <nospam-82F7A9.12110404012... at news.chingola.ch>, Paul Sture
> > <nos... 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

My x86 kit at home mostly has GbE these days. I used to think I wanted
to use the LAN for backups, e.g. to shift big backup images around. So
I bought a SoHo GbE switch and tried it. No noticeable improvement
over 100Mbit in terms of shifting big files round. In due course I
acquired another (different vendor) SoHo GbE switch and tried again.
Same result - something other than NIC speed is limiting the speed of
shifting files around. I'm assuming that the limiting factor in my
setup is hard drive write performance.

These days, I'm using USB-connected disk drives to do my backups,
moving the external disk to where the data is, rather than relying on
the LAN. Which is OK in my circumstances but not a general solution.

If there really is Gigabit-speed wireless around that can genuinely
deliver genuine Gigabit-class performance, I'll be pleasantly
surprised. These things may allegedly deliver GbE-like performance on
a good day with a following wind and decent signal quality, but the
2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi bands are no longer free of noise pollution, and
it's only going to get worse as time goes by.