Considerations for upgrading network capability - Speed, more computers,
security.
Speed, if your computer is under five years old
it and it has a network card or embedded
network capability the chances are it is 100 MBPS. If you know that your
card is a 10 MBPS card then it is time to upgrade. Upgrading to the Gigabit (1000
MBPS) card with out having a gigabit network is a waste of your money unless you
are upgrading all of your network.
A word here about Cable and DSL modems and internet access: the maximum speed currently
offered for cable or DSL users is 5 MegaBit. This is not
MEGA BYTE. 5megabit,
divide your current speed by 8, this will give you the current speed you can
transfer data to and from your ISP. I have 3 MegaBit DSL, I can only transfer at
384
KiloBytes per second. I think the reason the cable and phone companies
advertise their connection speed at MegaBit speeds is to fool us. Wow 3 meg!! or
5 meg!! In reality it is KiloBytes.
If you have a network in
your home or small business with more than three computers you should consider the network cards installed. Are they 10 or 100
MBPS. Do you transfer documents back and forth between the computers? Is it slow?
If it is you may want to consider the overall network speed. If all the
computers have 100 MBPS network cards it isn't the network cards it may be the
hub or the length of the cabling from the computer to the hub or the hub or
hardware configurations. If your hub is fairly new and has 100 MBS Full Duplex
(it transmits and receives at the same time) and is set for 100/full then you
may be having cabling problems.It is beyond the scope of this document to
trouble shoot network hardware and cabling
problems.If on the other hand you
have a very old network and mix of network cards (10, 100, 1000 MBPS) and an old
hub then you should upgrade to the hub and cards to the same speed.
Adding more computers to a network will
increase the demand on the network
components. You may want to add a hub in between your current hub and the
furthest computer, you may also want to consider a powered hub not a little non
powered workstation hub. A powered hub
will boost the signal which will degrade
after a certain distance from the first hub. Network topology is beyond
the scope of this document.
Gigabit cards - this is the latest and greatest
from the makers of network products. These cards have backward capability to 10 MBS. If you are buying new
you may want to consider the Gigabit if cost is not an determining factor, later
on the cost will go down and you can upgrade all the computers and your hub(s)
to gigabit.
Security - In this day and age security is on everyone's mind.
How do you secure your network from hackers/thieves/criminals? One way is to put
a firewall between your
network and them. Another is to have a
server that requires a user ID
and password to access the network and the computers.
On the left sidebar I have a little note:
"Your network is only as fast as your slowest device." I experienced this
phenomenon a couple of months ago when I upgraded my network from 100 MBPS to
1 GBPS, not all of my devices are capable of 1 GBPS, that is my older
laptops (three of them that I use for servers) have embedded in 100 MBPS
network interface cards, I have a HP Laser Jet that has a 100 MBPS network
card also. When I upgraded four other computers and added two new laptops
(with 1 GBPS NIC's embedded) I ran in to this problem. To over come the
problem I split my network in to two separate sections using 1 GBPS switches.
One switch has all the 1 GBPS network connections and the other switch has all
the 100 MBPS connections.
This splitting of the network connections insures the slower devices are
not interfering with the faster devices.
So if you are going to mix slower speed with higher speeds on you network
it is better to group them in sections where the slower devices don't
interfere with the higher speed devices.
This site contains a lot of information. As
with any publication not all information is available due to space, time, or
subject constraints.
If you have a question that you did not find the answer
on this web site you a can
ask your question here and we will endeavor to get you the most up to date
answer possible!
