USB Ethernet - Gigabyte LAN, is it worth it?

[ChiGGz]

I'm using my laptop on a dock as my main CPU. I'd like to get gigabyte LAN speeds but the built in LAN is 10/100.

With USB gigabyte ethernet adaptor, will I get a much more improved throughput, and at what costs to the CPU?


Laptop
CPU: C2D 2 GHz
4 GB RAM

[attonbitusira]

If I understand you correctly, you want to use a USB attachment to obtain speeds of 1Gbit.

This is not going to help your situation because your USB connectivity will be a bottleneck to your network connection.

[Hello-]

USB - 480mbit
Gigabit - 1000mbit

You won't be getting full gigabit speeds but if the dock is powerful enough it should at least give you full USB speeds (bottleneck as attonbitusira put it) on the ethernet port. Which is a significant increase from 100mbit ethernet.

[Amourek]

1 - Gigabit's 1000mbps is never 1000mbps. If you can get half that in real life, that's pretty good.
2 - USB's 480mbps is never 480mbps. I've never seen a USB device do more than 280mbps.
3 - You'll probably lose some speed in the conversion process as well. Best to get an ExpressCard adapter instead.

[malquin]

If your laptop has a pcmcia slot, you could get a pcmcia gigabit card.

[ChiGGz]

Thanks for the replies,

All valid points. Forgot all about the USB bottleneck. Might have to go with the PCMCIA route. :/

[Gee]

Why do you need Gigabit on a notebook, unless you are transfering lots of files to another machine in the house.

Even if you are, why shell out good money on a card? How many files do you have to transfer? I doubt it will take too long, if you have 500 Megs on your notebook, transfer your files over night while you are sleeping.

[Jon Lai]

Why do you need Gigabit on a notebook, unless you are transfering lots of files to another machine in the house.

Even if you are, why shell out good money on a card? How many files do you have to transfer? I doubt it will take too long, if you have 500 Megs on your notebook, transfer your files over night while you are sleeping.

+1

My personal opinion is that Gigabit is only necessary for file servers, but to each their own.

[ChiGGz]

Why do you need Gigabit on a notebook, unless you are transfering lots of files to another machine in the house.

Even if you are, why shell out good money on a card? How many files do you have to transfer? I doubt it will take too long, if you have 500 Megs on your notebook, transfer your files over night while you are sleeping.

The files I transfer are normally within the 8 gig range. I would probably do 24 gig transfers at any given time from my laptop to the server. I really wouldn't mind too much doing this overnight.

However, what I want to ultimately acheive is full speed access to my server when I'm remoting in from LAN. I'd like to be able to stream music / play songs from within the remote access client. I know, I can stream through network share... I have my own reason for wanting to stream through remote access.

But I do understand your point. If a card is < $50 I wouldn't mind too much.

[Jon Lai]

The files I transfer are normally within the 8 gig range. I would probably do 24 gig transfers at any given time from my laptop to the server. I really wouldn't mind too much doing this overnight.

However, what I want to ultimately acheive is full speed access to my server when I'm remoting in from LAN. I'd like to be able to stream music / play songs from within the remote access client. I know, I can stream through network share... I have my own reason for wanting to stream through remote access.

But I do understand your point. If a card is < $50 I wouldn't mind too much.

In that case you should do some investigation. Lag through remote access has more to do with software than the speed of the network. Think about it, why is it often that when streaming thru remote access lags but at the same time that isn't a problem through networking sharing?

[ChiGGz]

In that case you should do some investigation. Lag through remote access has more to do with software than the speed of the network. Think about it, why is it often that when streaming thru remote access lags but at the same time that isn't a problem through networking sharing?

Ya I know what you mean. Processing data through a remote app vs streaming raw data through network shares is a huge difference. This is more of a convenience thing for me than anything.

[pitz]

1 - Gigabit's 1000mbps is never 1000mbps. If you can get half that in real life, that's pretty good.


I have no issues pushing 80+mb/sec out of a Linux Samba server to my Vista-running C2D laptop (T7500, Intel Santa Rosa, 4gb RAM).

Laptop uses a Broadcom gig-E Ethernet chip.

But yeah, why do you need Gig-E?

[Gee]

However, what I want to ultimately acheive is full speed access to my server when I'm remoting in from LAN. I'd like to be able to stream music / play songs from within the remote access client. I know, I can stream through network share... I have my own reason for wanting to stream through remote access.

The speed of your internet will be the limiting factor. Doesn't matter how fast your LAN is, if you have DSL and you can only upload 500k, why would it matter how fast your LAN is

At best, you can get 1 Meg on cable.

1 Meg is 1% of your LANs maximum speed.

Save your money

[ChiGGz]

The speed of your internet will be the limiting factor. Doesn't matter how fast your LAN is, if you have DSL and you can only upload 500k, why would it matter how fast your LAN is

At best, you can get 1 Meg on cable.

1 Meg is 1% of your LANs maximum speed.

Save your money

Remote access over LAN is what I primarily concerned with. Its ok, we can discuss this till the cows come home lol.

Now to find a cheap card.

[attonbitusira]

+1

My personal opinion is that Gigabit is only necessary for file servers, but to each their own.

Agreed. Even between IT staff we only use 100 Mbit.

[board123]

I'm surprised no one has brought up the suspicion that OP doesn't even have a gigabit switch to start with, which potentially makes this entire thread pointless.

[Gee]

Remote access over LAN is what I primarily concerned with. Its ok, we can discuss this till the cows come home lol.

Now to find a cheap card.

I am not sure how big your house is, but I am sure it is easier to just walk over to the computer that you want to access and just plant your butt in front of it.

But, if you need to access it locally, I am sure you will see little or no difference if you are using remote desktop over 100 mbps ethernet to access a computer in the next room or another part of the mansion.

File transfer is where it really matters.

If you find latency with 100 mbps ethernet, I would be REALLY surprised.

[magical]

+1

My personal opinion is that Gigabit is only necessary for file servers, but to each their own.

I'd hate to live in your world!

I can't live without gig-e, on my laptop, pc's wherever I go.

10/100 was ok when we had 4gb hard drives, but nowadays when we are talking about 500gb and 1tb drives, gig-e is a must!

[Jon Lai]

I'd hate to live in your world!

I can't live without gig-e, on my laptop, pc's wherever I go.

10/100 was ok when we had 4gb hard drives, but nowadays when we are talking about 500gb and 1tb drives, gig-e is a must!
It's not about the size of the hard drive, but the size of files you tend to transfer.

Most of the time I transfer files in the 500mb to 2GB range. 100mbps works fine.

[board123]

Even for smaller files, gigabit is nice because it's almost as fast as your internal drives.

[toalan]

Hi,

I have a question, I want to go gigabit, my objective is to run a VMware virtual machine stored on my desktop/NAS box on my laptop.

Has anyone tried this? Right now I have my VM stored on an external 2.5" USB drive attached to my laptop and it is quite zippy. If gigabit can offer me the same or better performance as the usb HDD, then I am willing to invest.

REgards,

Alan To

[magical]

It's not about the size of the hard drive, but the size of files you tend to transfer.

Most of the time I transfer files in the 500mb to 2GB range. 100mbps works fine.

It works but the speed is always nice to have, I hate waiting for slow transfers, I want to pull my teeth out! And the cost is negligible, it defiantly isn't that expensive to have nowadays even at home, and if you have a media server its so nice. Personally I couldn't live without it.

When hard drives were only pushing 40mb/sec I could see it not really making much of a diff, but now most of the good ones can push upwards of 90mb/sec making it a huge benefit even if you only get real world 500mbit/sec speed outta it.