Fast Ethernet in Gigabit Ethernet Environment

sheikh ahmed zubedi · ‎04-15-2009

Hi all,

I have a Freind that has a gigbit ethenet infrastructure in his company. Recently he added a fast ethernet switche to his DMZ where all his servers are connected, I suggested to him to go for Gigabit Ethernet Switches as his entire network has Gigabit Ethernet. He told me that since there internet link is only 24Mbps having a Gigabit interface on the DMZ would not make access to servers any faster. However i told him that it would make it faster for people who are accessing the servers from the LAN. i would like to know who's argument is correct and what is the best practise in this regard.

Thanks for your answers,

Ahmed

srimural · ‎04-16-2009

Hi Ahmed,

A traffic flow will be taking the lowest bandwidth and currently since you are using a 24M internet bw, for internet access a FE will satisfy your requirement. if you consider your lan service and data access rate from server farm and all. Please take care of your future upgrades soft and hard.

Regards,

Srinath

Cable&Wireless

Joseph W. Doherty · ‎04-16-2009

If the internal LAN, which includes connectivity to the DMZ segment, supports end-to-end gig, it should decrease data tranmission time. However, whether the difference will be noticable also depends on the performance of the hosts (gig Ethernet can saturate original PCI buses and/or some disk subsystems) and the performance of firewall/proxy, I presume, that sits between the DMZ and the internal LAN.

One unexpected benefit of gig connected hosts, if they are Windows XP (or Windows Servers?) like TCP stacks, Windows OS will default a larger TCP RWIN which can improve "pull" performance across a WAN. 24 Mbps of WAN bandwidth is enough where this benefit might be seen.