On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 10:33 AM, Simon Billis <simon at houxou.com> wrote: > Hi Rudi, > >> Does anyone have, or know of a comparison chart of the different >> network adapters, i.e. 1GB / 10GB, Infiniband, etc. And if possible >> with a few top brand NIC's and switches listed as well. >> >> I would like to see, for example, what the max throughput is of a 1GB >> NIC (and this could probably differ from PCI to PCIE-x1 to PCIE-x4), >> and 10GBE. Different switches would probably also have different >> ratings, but could a layer 2 switch & layer3 switch deliver the same >> performance for example? >> >> Basically I need to know what upload / download speeds I should be >> getting from the different networks, set aside other options like CPU >> / RAM / disc IO / etc. > > If you exclude the host capability to deliver data to the interface and also > the ability of the host to assemble and disassemble packets, then the speeds > will be dependent on the switches capability to handle the packet size and > numbers of packets arriving at an interface in a specific time period. You > should expect wirespeeds (minus the overhead of the Ethernet frame and the > IP frame) for most switches with usual packet sizes (below 1500 bytes) i.e. > the usual (if there is such a thing) packet size, provided that you're not > flooding the interfaces with very small packets and your switch is set to > store and forward. If your switch is able to cut and forward which is a must > for jumbo frames to be handled quickly, then you can also expect close to > wirespeeds for any frame size. Cut and forward switches are expensive but > are a must for storage networks if you're interested in low latency > switching. > > Layer 3 switching is basically routing done on a switch and therefore > increases the latency slightly to a lot as the switch has to decode the > layer 3 information and make a decision based on that as opposed to the > outer layer 2 information. > > Due to the many factors affecting network speeds, most switch manufacturers > specify the switch capability/capacity in backplane bandwidth, maximum > packet numbers switched per second and memory available for store and > forward. As soon as one of these limits is breached then the performance > will take a hit and this hit can be a big one. > > I'm sorry that I can't be more helpful and provide you with what you're > after, but I hope that this has answered some questions for you. > > Rgds > > Simon. > > > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > Thanx Simon, this was rather useful. So, if I have a layer2 & layer3 switch at my disposal then I won't really notice much differences between them, right? The one SMC switch I have at the office can handle 200MB/s, according to the spec sheet. But, can a normal 1GB NIC handle the same throughput? -- Kind Regards Rudi Ahlers SoftDux Website: http://www.SoftDux.com Technical Blog: http://Blog.SoftDux.com Office: 087 805 9573 Cell: 082 554 7532