Comments on: Manage the unmanageable...

Question: Manage the unmanageable...

tysiva — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 12:52:28 -0800

Will an unmanaged gigabit switch slow gigabit devices when non-gigabit devices are on the same network?

I recently got an unmanaged gigabit switch because I have a network attached storage box that should be able to work at gigabit speeds with my desktop. However, my laptop only supports 10/100 ethernet. Is my laptop going to slow the connection between the desktop and the storage due to the fact that the switch is unmanaged?

By: Good Brain

Good Brain — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 13:02:40 -0800

Shouldn't. Unmanaged just means you can't monitor and configure the switch with standard network management protocols.

By: drstein

drstein — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 13:04:10 -0800

No, it won't. the 10/100 device will just talk to the switch at 10/100. It won't slow everything else down.

You might be thinking it's like a USB 2.0 hub - plugging a USB 1.1 device in can/will slow everything down, but ethernet isn't like that.

By: paulsc

paulsc — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 13:09:06 -0800

Assuming your switch has enough per port memory, no. One problem on small switches with only a few ports is that the backplane may be based on a chip set that is truly gigabit between all ports, but when the switch is fully loaded, the work of buffering, error correction, and other work done by the individual port chip sets can happen faster than the switching layer can work, due to processing and memory constraints. Processing and memory improvements both cost money, so these kinds of unmanaged switches typically do only miminal processing for the few ports they support, hence no advanced features like large frame support, etc.

So, the answer to your question may be "No, you won't see a slow down." if your cables are good quality, your laptop isn't contributing much traffic to the NAS port when your desktop is using NAS, and there aren't any other obvious network problems catching up with you. Experience is a pretty good teacher in this, but if your NAS and your desktop have gigabit chip sets that can support large frames, you'd see a performance improvement by buying a more sophisticated switch.

By: Pinback

Pinback — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:12:20 -0800

... but ethernet isn't like that.
Actually, it is - which is why you use a switch rather than a hub. A hub basically parallels everything together, forcing them all to talk at the speed of the slowest. A switch buffers and switches packets between individual devices, so each can talk at their maximum speed - overall throughput between any 2 devices will still be limited to the speed of the slower device, but it doesn't affect other devices on the same switch.

FWIW, you can get USB switches that work the same way, but they're not common - because, unlike ethernet, USB is primarily a master/slave connection.

By: Alex Handcoding

Alex Handcoding — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 18:50:55 -0800

FWIW, you can get USB switches that work the same way, but they're not common - because, unlike ethernet, USB is primarily a master/slave connection.

So, since you brought it up, where can one buy such things? (I have a couple older USB 1.x devices and I'd rather not slow down my USB 2.x devices that are currently sharing the same USB hub.)

By: tysiva

tysiva — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 21:55:33 -0800

Thank you all- I got some very solid answers and the answers were the ones I wanted :-)
Thanks, folks.

By: drstein

drstein — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 15:23:24 -0800

Pinback: uh, yeah, but nobody mentioned using a hub. Your information is good, but irrelevant. :-)