Building a multi-gigabit network

[spadz93]

I'm interested in building a home network with capacity to run some devices at 2.5Gbps (NAS, gaming rigs, etc). I'm still looking around and scratching my head at the equipment I would need to make this work. I can find several multi-gigabit/10-gig switches (or even gigabit switches with some multi-gig ports), but very few routers that have multi-gig ports on them. Operating under the assumption that I need a router between my modem and my switch, wouldn't I be limited to gigabit speeds inside my LAN, despite having a multi-gig switch?

 

Also, I'm not interested in routers that also have wifi capabilities. Would be plenty happy with a wired router as I plan to run access points

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

the switch would handle all the traffic between devices on you lan in this setup, so the router won't affect the speed of lan transfers. Id just get a gigabit router unless you have over gigabit from your isp.

[spadz93]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

the switch would handle all the traffic between devices on you lan in this setup, so the router won't affect the speed of lan transfers. Id just get a gigabit router unless you have over gigabit from your isp.

Okay, so my understanding was incorrect. Would I need to get a managed switch, or would an unmanaged one do the same? I don't really plan on doing any VLANs 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, spadz93 said:

Okay, so my understanding was incorrect. Would I need to get a managed switch, or would an unmanaged one do the same? I don't really plan on doing any VLANs 

You don't need a managed switch, but I like to get them as you newer know when you need the features.

 

What switches are you looking at? Id probably get something from like mikrotik.

[Biomecanoid]

25 minutes ago, spadz93 said:

I'm interested in building a home network with capacity to run some devices at 2.5Gbps (NAS, gaming rigs, etc). I'm still looking around and scratching my head at the equipment I would need to make this work. I can find several multi-gigabit/10-gig switches (or even gigabit switches with some multi-gig ports), but very few routers that have multi-gig ports on them. Operating under the assumption that I need a router between my modem and my switch, wouldn't I be limited to gigabit speeds inside my LAN, despite having a multi-gig switch?

 

Also, I'm not interested in routers that also have wifi capabilities. Would be plenty happy with a wired router as I plan to run access points

 

 

What is your internet speed ? Do you need to move files over the network between computers super fast ?

[spadz93]

42 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You don't need a managed switch, but I like to get them as you newer know when you need the features.

 

What switches are you looking at? Id probably get something from like mikrotik.

I'm currently looking at a QNAP QSW-M408-4C

37 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

What is your internet speed ? Do you need to move files over the network between computers super fast ?

My internet speed will be 200mbps (i'm still closing on the home). However, LAN speed is a priority for me as I would like to be able to access my NAS quicker for gaming storage.

[Biomecanoid]

25 minutes ago, spadz93 said:

I'm currently looking at a QNAP QSW-M408-4C

My internet speed will be 200mbps (i'm still closing on the home). However, LAN speed is a priority for me as I would like to be able to access my NAS quicker for gaming storage.

What do you mean by gaming storage, I hope you don't mean that you wish to install games on the NAS and run them directly from there. That will not fly

[spadz93]

1 hour ago, Biomecanoid said:

What do you mean by gaming storage, I hope you don't mean that you wish to install games on the NAS and run them directly from there. That will not fly

Why wouldn't it? Theoretically, a 5 drive nas (like I have) setup in raid5 should easily outperform a single 7200rpm drive in read speeds due to the ability to pull from multiple drives at once

[Biomecanoid]

9 minutes ago, spadz93 said:

Why wouldn't it? Theoretically, a 5 drive nas (like I have) setup in raid5 should easily outperform a single 7200rpm drive in read speeds due to the ability to pull from multiple drives at once

If you want TOP speed get an SSD for your PC. A local SSD will smoke the Raid over the network. If you want even more speed make a Raid0 with SSDs on your computer.

 

I have 2 SSDs in Raid0 for a boot drive and 2 HDDS in Raid0 for data

 

 

[spadz93]

Just now, Biomecanoid said:

If you want TOP speed get an SSD for your PC. A local SSD will smoke the Raid over the network. If you want even more speed make a Raid0 with SSDs on your computer.

 

I have 2 SSDs in Raid0 for a boot drive and 2 HDDS in Raid0 for data

 

 

I don't care for blazing fast gaming storage, I want larger capacity and sufficient speed. I already have an nvme gaming ssd, but I want to be able to utilize the massively larger amount of space on my nas to store games.

[Biomecanoid]

4 minutes ago, spadz93 said:

I don't care for blazing fast gaming storage, I want larger capacity and sufficient speed. I already have an nvme gaming ssd, but I want to be able to utilize the massively larger amount of space on my nas to store games.

That is not the correct way to do it. What you should do is make a Raid array on you computer locally.

[spadz93]

1 minute ago, Biomecanoid said:

That is not the correct way to do it. What you should do is make a Raid array on you computer locally.

Appreciate the advice, but my original question was already solved. As for your reluctance to realize that gaming from a NAS is a possibility, i'll leave this behind 

 

[Biomecanoid]

43 minutes ago, spadz93 said:

Appreciate the advice, but my original question was already solved. As for your reluctance to realize that gaming from a NAS is a possibility, i'll leave this behind 

 

Well you will understand when you do it.

 

* Sata is much faster than most networks.

* You will flood your network with traffic and your switch will light up like a xmas tree.

* You will have to mount the network share with the same letter, if that changes your games won't work.

* A network is less reliable than local storage you may have latency issues,  disconnections or worse. Access time would suck., 

* You will be hurting the loading time of your games.

etc etc the list is too long,

 

In the computer world you should follow the KISS principle. you can do exactly the same thing with your PC, there is no reason to make an elaborate network that would involve, ethernet cables, switches, hard-drives in raid, a NAS etc that could do the same thing less efficiently than one or two drives could do installed on your pc locally.

 

Just because something happened on the internet does not mean its a great idea and you should follow it. If you want to do it for the fun of it go ahead but its not a great idea.  Have you done networking before ?

[Biomecanoid]

My 10 years old HP Z400 can do about 540MB/s  which translates to roughly a 4.5Gbps network. This 10 year old computer will load games more than 2 times faster than your new PC + elaborate network + NAS.

 

So in effect you spend time, money and electricity to make things worse. If you want to do this you should go to 10gbps and then it will be about the same speed as local storage

 

[spadz93]

1 hour ago, Biomecanoid said:

My 10 years old HP Z400 can do about 540MB/s  which translates to roughly a 4.5Gbps network. This 10 year old computer will load games more than 2 times faster than your new PC + elaborate network + NAS.

 

So in effect you spend time, money and electricity to make things worse. If you want to do this you should go to 10gbps and then it will be about the same speed as local storage

 

This is getting horribly off topic. I'm going to lay out some information. I just finished playing far cry new dawn for a half hour. My resolution is set to 1440p, and framerate was very frequently pegged at 144 with max settings. The game played like butter. I'm *still* only on 1gbps. To further verify, I ran crystaldiskmark. Sequential r/w on a 7200rpm drive was 150mb/s. The NAS was 118mb/s. Coincidence that that number is right in the neighborhood of 1gbps? I think not. This tells me that a faster LAN connection will further improve these scores, potentially way beyond the 7200rpm drive, but for now, It works. It's no SSD, but it freaking works. Bear in mind the random4k r/w speed was better on the NAS compared to a 7200rpm drive, with the 7200rpm drive scoring 1.15/1.63mbps r/w, and the NAS scoring 37.45/29.63mbps r/w.

 

There are a few reasons I want to do this. One is because I have multiple gaming pcs that (will be) around my house, one in my office for keyboard/mouse gaming, and one in my living room for relaxed couch/controller gaming. Rather than have two rigs with multiple drives (especially in the living room where i'm trying to lower my footprint), I would rather have games stored centrally on a larger NAS so that I can point both machines at it. Both machines will not be used simultaneously, either. And before arguing the whole "if storage is such a big deal, just uninstall the games" deal, I'm moving to a location that doesn't have great bandwidth options, especially not for the money. If I can store my collection locally, then that's less that I have to deal with waiting to play.

 

Also, as a note, I just played in an environment with several Google Homes, wifi thermostats, a few chromecasts streaming, and a few other computers running. Still got those results. So please, the whole world knows SSDs are faster than HDDs or RAIDs based off HDDs. Stop downplaying the performance of a NAS on a faster LAN network. It works. And even if I do encounter a game that's horrendously terrible to play over a NAS, I can just transfer that game over to my machine (possibly quicker thanks to a faster LAN, mind you), without having to worry about clogging up my local storage drive(s) with games.

[Biomecanoid]

* How are you going to play games installed on one computer on your other computers on the network ?   Installed applications rely on more than the files installed in the HDD, you have registry entries, DX updates/plugins, VB .net, Codecs for the in game movies etc  all these WON'T be transferred onto the other computers, simple games will play but not complex ones and you will have to reinstall for each PC.

 

* Copying games from one pc to another does not always work because games install other stuff as well as prerequisite for the game to run.

 

* As you are saying you are currently having about 5400rpm HDD performance, Even your ideal setup may have the top speed of a 10000rpm drive. Why replicate more than 10 years old technology with modern hardware. You are just making an elaborate, expensive slow with today's standard network HDD. I never heard of someone wanting slower loading times, local storage is always faster.

 

* Adding a hard drive on your computer does not alter your foot print, you already have wasted space inside the PC I am sure.

 

* You just like it cause its a new thing for you, like a new adventure, go do it, it will be fun, but it will grow old very quickly and everybody with a normal setup will have much better performance than you.

 

* If it would work well everybody would be doing it. its not that you stumbled into something new. If you want to stay in this century in terms of performance you should go 10gb with fast enough drives to back it up only then you will have more or less the speed of local storage.

 

 

[rollercoaster24]

23 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You don't need a managed switch, but I like to get them as you newer know when you need the features.

 

What switches are you looking at? Id probably get something from like mikrotik.

Before joining this forum, I thought the same as you, but I didn't need the managed features. So, I got the 5-port 2.5GbE switch from QNAP (QNAP QSW-1105-5T 5-Port Unmanaged 2.5GbE Switch, https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/qsw-1105-5t).

 

But, when I put it behind my router, I was only getting about 40MB/s transfer speeds (even though the connection comes up as 2.5Gb/s in Network and Sharing Center), which was a downgrade from the 110MB/s that I was getting with just the 1GbE router. I've attached two images that show the original network layout and the new one that does not work like I think it should. Another thing to note is that the NAS is another standard Windows 10 PC, so I can actually see the 2.5Gb/s in the Network and Sharing Center of both the Windows 10 NAS and the client Windows 10 PC.

 

My next thought was to upgrade my router with one that has at least one 2.5GbE port so that everything connected to the switch would be 2.5GbE capable, and I'm considering this router: ASUS RT-AX86U,https://www.asus.com/us/Networking/RT-AX86U/

 

It's possible this belongs in the troubleshooting section, but I don't think there is anything wrong with any hardware. I think I just don't know the proper layout, and I'm hoping someone can assist with that. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

Original Layout:

 

New Layout:

[Electronics Wizardy]

32 minutes ago, rollercoaster24 said:

 

My next thought was to upgrade my router with one that has at least one 2.5GbE port so that everything connected to the switch would be 2.5GbE capable, and I'm considering this router: ASUS RT-AX86U,https://www.asus.com/us/Networking/RT-AX86U/

 

The router won't be the issue here, I woudln't change it. The traffic should never be hitting the router.

 

33 minutes ago, rollercoaster24 said:

ut, when I put it behind my router, I was only getting about 40MB/s transfer speeds (even though the connection comes up as 2.5Gb/s in Network and Sharing Center), which was a downgrade from the 110MB/s that I was getting with just the 1GbE router. I've attached two images that show the original network layout and the new one that does not work like I think it should. Another thing to note is that the NAS is another standard Windows 10 PC, so I can actually see the 2.5Gb/s in the Network and Sharing Center of both the Windows 10 NAS and the client Windows 10 PC.

Test the speeds with something like iperf first, to find out what the network can actually do.

 

 

Do you get full 2.5gbe speeds if the computers are connected directly?

 

Id probalby try to get a managed switch, makes these issues much easier to troubleshoot.

[rollercoaster24]

37 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

The router won't be the issue here, I woudln't change it. The traffic should never be hitting the router.

 

Test the speeds with something like iperf first, to find out what the network can actually do.

 

 

Do you get full 2.5gbe speeds if the computers are connected directly?

 

Id probalby try to get a managed switch, makes these issues much easier to troubleshoot.

After the file transfer was slow, I did some research, found iperf, and used it and got the same result, 40MB/s.

 

I've never connected two computers directly with an ethernet cable. Is that what you mean?

 

So, I have a question about managed switches. Do they setup a new LAN downstream of the router's LAN? Meaning, if I put the NAS on a managed switch downstream of the router, will I be able to access the NAS through the router's WiFi because it all becomes one larger network, or would they be separated where the router's WiFi and LAN are together and the managed switch has a 2nd and separate LAN?

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, rollercoaster24 said:

I've never connected two computers directly with an ethernet cable. Is that what you mean?

Yup, just plug them in directly.

 

3 hours ago, rollercoaster24 said:

So, I have a question about managed switches. Do they setup a new LAN downstream of the router's LAN? Meaning, if I put the NAS on a managed switch downstream of the router, will I be able to access the NAS through the router's WiFi because it all becomes one larger network, or would they be separated where the router's WiFi and LAN are together and the managed switch has a 2nd and separate LAN?

Depends on how they are configured, but by default, most will work like unmanaged switches unless you change settings.

 

l2 switches can't make a new subnet on their own, thats what a router or l3 switch can do.

[Alex Atkin UK]

4 hours ago, rollercoaster24 said:

After the file transfer was slow, I did some research, found iperf, and used it and got the same result, 40MB/s.

 

I've never connected two computers directly with an ethernet cable. Is that what you mean?

 

So, I have a question about managed switches. Do they setup a new LAN downstream of the router's LAN? Meaning, if I put the NAS on a managed switch downstream of the router, will I be able to access the NAS through the router's WiFi because it all becomes one larger network, or would they be separated where the router's WiFi and LAN are together and the managed switch has a 2nd and separate LAN?

I have a managed switch and what I found was the speed was inconsistent without flow control enabled.

 

In my case the NAS was plugged in at 10Gbit but when I tried to pull to a 1Gbit client, I'd get slow speeds like you saw.  This was because the data was coming into the switch at 10Gbit then bottlenecking, causing packet loss.  Flow control does as it says and forces a mechanism that ensures this cannot happen.

 

It may work with an unmanaged switch if you manually force flow control on the adapters of all clients, I'm not sure.  But my solution was simple, enabled it on every port on the switch and magically it all works fine.

[spadz93]

Bit of an update here. So, I ended up going with the QSW-M408-2C. It's managed, and has the amount of ports that fits my needs. However, a bit of an odd bug, it seems to think it cannot access the internet (say, when checking for firmware updates, or syncing with time servers), but meanwhile all connected devices are able to access the internet just fine. Normally i'd leave well enough alone, but this bothers me and I'm snowed in, so might as well play around. My house uses the Google Mesh Wifi points (not my decision), and the switch is connected via the LAN port on the first mesh point in the chain where the WAN cable is going into. I'll have to dig around a bit more.