Gigabit switch?

Posted by: MangoMonkey on 21 November 2011

Just wondering. Is there any value in using a gigabit switch rather than a 10/100 fast ethernet switch when connecting the streamer to the NAS?

Posted on: 21 November 2011 by BigH47

I have been  recommended to get a Gigabit switch over a Fast net one. Future proofing maybe?

Posted on: 21 November 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk
MangoMonkey there is no real advantage for audio use, to be honest for future proofing you would need to see switch throughput specs rather than port speeds. 1000BASET port simply use all 8 Ethernet wires as opposed to 6 if the other end also supports it. (Naim currently don't).
What I would recommend however is choosing a switch that senses the Ethernet cable length and reduces the drive voltage as appropriate. Some of these devices do also support 1000BASET. For example Netgear have a variant of this on some of thier switches called 'Netgear Green'. Not only does this save power consumption but also reduces propensity of EMI from the Ethernet.
Simon
Posted on: 22 November 2011 by Iver van de Zand

Dear Simon,

 

Thanks, that's helpfull. I am probably wrong, but I thought that a GigaSwitch would enable much faster speed of for example FLAC's when embedded in a streaming network. Am I wrong ?

 

Posted on: 22 November 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk
Iver, 1000BASE-T allows a transmission rate of 1000 M bits per second at the frame level on a particular port. Bear in mind CD wave is 1.4Mbps. Therefore we would need to resolution of excess of 60 x CD before we would exceed a typical 100BASEt let alone a 1000BAST.
Therefore hidef wavs and FLACs really are comfortably down within 100BAST and CD and some hidef is also good at 10BASET, which is rather old fashioned now.

Therefore all we are doing using 1000BASET if our Naim gear supported it is sending little bursts of frames with large gaps of nothing in between. With 100 and 10 BASET the gaps between frames (or group of frames) get progressively shorter.  When there are no gaps left, the link is full up.

My final point, is that enabling a port to 1000NASET is simple, it's a standard chipset technology. However the the overall throughput of the switch is more relevant. Ie the amount of data it can switch across all ports. Cheap switches are often low bandwidth limited, and so it would reduce the effective data throughput rate if there was load on the other ports of the switch.
Another way of looking at it, is your broadband could be at 6Mbps.. In the middle of the night your surfing performance is great, however in the evening your performance slows down because of congestion in the uplink network from your ISP, but your broadband is stll at 6Mbps.
Simon
Posted on: 22 November 2011 by roo

Does the NDX support gigabit Ethernet? The manual doesn't mention any speeds and I've not got a gigabit switch at home to try it with.

Posted on: 22 November 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk
No it only supports standard and fast Ethernet ( 10 and 100 Mbps). A Gigabit Ethernet switch will/should negotiate a fast Ethernet duplex connection to the nDX (ie 100 Mbps duplex link)
Simon
Posted on: 22 November 2011 by MangoMonkey

So my Cisco-Linksys WRT54GL Wireless-G Broadband Router is good enough and up to the task?

http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Linksys-WRT54GL-Wireless-G-Broadband-Router/dp/B000BTL0OA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1321955120&sr=8-2

Posted on: 22 November 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk
Well the link says your router contains a 4 port 10/100 Mbps switch. No mention of switch throughput, but am sure it will work absolutely fine with your Naim kit.
Simon
Posted on: 22 November 2011 by Iver van de Zand
Hi Simon, many thanks for your feedback. Finally I start understanding this stuff !! Tx !
Iver
Posted on: 22 November 2011 by Guido Fawkes

> Cisco-Linksys WRT54GL Wireless-G Broadband Router is good enough 


Most definitely - nowt wrong with that, good choice. You should check your firmware is at least a revision 4.30.5 which I suspect it will be.  


Now I'm waiting for somebody who has a Juniper router/switch like me to tell me they can hear a difference between JunOS 10.4 and 11.1  - HiFi Critic perhaps 

Posted on: 22 November 2011 by garyi
Thing are indeed adequate, but wireless n and gigabit switches do make a heck of a difference. Fr instance if you are ripping music locally then copying to a nas, gigabit makes that so much more quick.
Posted on: 22 November 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk
Gary, interesting, I rip from a PC directly to my NAS using 100Mbps, and  the limiting factor is my ripper which rips at 18x. I guess I would need to rip at x60 with no gaps to benefit from 1000 Mbps which would mean ripping a typical CD in about 60 seconds.... That would be great.
What ripping system are you using?

Of course for large data transfer one can activate jumbo frames if your equipment supports it that  increases throughput for a given network speed.
Simon
Posted on: 23 November 2011 by garyi

I would never rip directly to nas, I always rip locally then copy over.

 

I get throughput of around 50-60MB/s mac to mac, 50MB/s down and 20MB/s up from NAS.

 

These figures are just not obtainable from TBase 100, and considering the reasonable price of gigabit switches its a bit of a no brainer really.

Posted on: 23 November 2011 by roo

I find that even at 18x ripping speed dbPoweramp isn't able to copy the files to the NAS quickly enough if I use 100mbps Ethernet so gigabit certainly helps here. You can tell by the way dbPoweramp has a maximum of four tracks in progress at any one time and ripping stalls until the first ripped track or the four is copied to the NAS. For the original question 100mbps Ethernet is sufficient as the streamer doesn't support a higher speed connection. I think you'll also find that most switches bought recently can forward packets at a rate well in excess of what a Naim streamer needs.

Posted on: 23 November 2011 by roo
Originally Posted by garyi:

I would never rip directly to nas, I always rip locally then copy over.

What benefit does ripping locally bring?

Posted on: 23 November 2011 by BigH47

FYIW:-

I have just fitted am Netgear Gigabit switch GS 108. I was having an issue with juddery performance when playing iTunes from my NAS, (BT HH3 providing the switch).

This seems to have been fixed now, with the gigaswitch.

Posted on: 23 November 2011 by garyi
Originally Posted by roo:
Originally Posted by garyi:

I would never rip directly to nas, I always rip locally then copy over.

What benefit does ripping locally bring?

For the very reason you mention above. Same with DVDs when ripping locally its super fast then you just batch drag them to the nas, this prevents and risks of network issues in the ripping process.

 

I believe HDXs etc do the same when a store is set up, i.e. rips locally then copies over once done.

Posted on: 23 November 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk
BigH, yep as I have said elsewhere using a standard switch over bundled ones in some switches really can help.
Using Gigaethernet is useful for moving big blocks of data around if both peers support it, for streaming it's an overkill and not supported by Naim. For that matter if you are sending big files to and from a NAS then high speed disks (SATA 7200 Baracudas) and jumbo frames (less network overhead) are the order of the day.
I must admit data transfer of 50 MBps is rather phenomenal sustained rate to a consumerNAS, but if it had a vast cache RAM then I can see it working well. My Netgear NAS has only a max sustained transfer of around 8 MBps.
Simon
Posted on: 23 November 2011 by garyi

I never said too I said from, copy to the NAS is typically around 16-20MB/s on ethernet.

 

For day to day LAN duties its silly basing your network on the lowest common denominator, especially how cheap it all is. Might as well get gigabit as 100.

 

I am measuring this with iStat pro which measures throughput ad hoc, and I can except therefore I am not getting averages, I need to do some real world measurements for a given file size. Certainly I have never seen a copy in dropping below 30MB/s so its at least that. The TS412 on netbuilder is throughputting at 45MB/s

 

Having set up a 100 speed network, the differences are really rather marked.

 

On wireless with a the top o the line asus RTN56u I get 8MB/s to and fro, give or take.

 

Posted on: 23 November 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk
BigH, the netgear GS range of switches are good. I use GS105e currently in my listening room serving my NDX and AppleTV2  only at 100BASET,  no prob at all. I then feed that from another switch, elsewhere in my house, a Cisco 2960 which handles my NAS, ripper, PC, printer and router connections and a trunked down link to another 2960 which handles my wireless WAP, upnp server and some work related VLAN stuff.
Simon
Posted on: 23 November 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk
Gary, I agree, but no point replacing perfectly good switches with Gige unless you know what you are doing. The point originally was referring to streaming and hopefully I explained that, but clearly for other applications there is benefit if the appropriate peers support 1000BASET.
I guess I was was wanting to counter those who justifiably don't want to understand the where with alls, didnt think just because a switch has an extra 0 it will make thier streamer sound better and bin perfectly suitable equipment if it's working already.
Simon
Posted on: 23 November 2011 by garyi
On that we can agree. A switch will not make anything 'sound' better
Posted on: 23 November 2011 by BigH47

Mine sounds better , but that's because it's not "dropping" parts of the music.

 

Posted on: 23 November 2011 by garyi

Haha yea fair point.

 

I got a 20 port us robotics gigabit switch on broadbandbuyer a couple of years ago. I think there was a mistake on the website because it was 60 quid, and I can me across it by accident, suffice to say I snapped it up. An hour later it was 144 quid.