"DanR" <dhr22@sorrynospm.com> wrote in message
news:QVoUe.3268$6e1.1632@newssvr14.news.prodigy.co m...
> Question about typical company network. We are looking at going gigabit
mainly
> because of a perceived network slowdown in the past 6 months or so. But...
some
> of use are not sure that the 100 Mb T1 current network is really the
fault.
> Question is: We have some really speedy computers on the network and some
not so
> speedy. Can slow clock speed computers drag down the entire network? We
have B /
> G Wi-Fi on both sides of the firewall. Can they drag down overall speed of
the
> network? We have hubs / switches that feed other hubs / switches. How bad
a
> practice is that?
> There are about 50 wired drops around the building and around 8 wi-fi hot
spots.
> Previous IT guy set the wi-fi up with all different SSIDs. We don't care
about
> lap top roaming so maybe that's not a big deal. Or not?
> Any suggestions?
>
If you are running from the server through one switch and using one output
to feed another switch at 100 Mb, then taking the outputs of the second
switch to feed a number of workstations, then all those workstations must
share the single 100Mb feed from the first switch. Not good practice for
maintaining good throughput and response.

Just watching the "blinking lights" on the switches can give you some idea
of loading and in what directions the load is coming from.

Either you need to redistribute the workstation load more evenly or better,
take the network to gigabit so that the data moves a bit faster. Also be on
the lookout for a bad or "garbaging" NIC. Some varieties can soft fail
slowly and really start dragging a network down. Using managed switches
rather than unmanaged and setting them up properly usually makes a
significant difference.

You may also wish to look at adding a second (and third or fourth) ethernet
port on your server and feeding a switch directly rather than using a point
of an existing earlier switch. Four ethernet ports on the server, each
feeding a single 16 port switch and then directly to the clients will share
out the load significantly but be absolutely sure you use good NICs such as
the genuine Intel Pro series rather than many of the cheap aftermarket types
that generally cannot stand very high consistent traffic error free.

Remember also the cascading guidelines for switches, 10Mb - 3 cascaded,
100Mb - 2 cascaded, gigabit - no cascading.

Peter