Help setting up a gigabit network in my house...
 

So my new motherboard came with a built-in gigabit lan port, and I'm in the market for a new router (my current one apparently doesn't work too well with some VPN protocols...). I thought I would like to look into upgrading my home network to all gigabit at the same time.

I'm having trouble getting started though. First off, can anyone recommend some consumer level gigabit routers for me? Ones with somewhere between 4 and 8 ports. I'm having trouble finding too many places that sell them, not to mention reviews of the few that exist.

I'll also want to get gigabit network adapters for my Linux box and my laptop. Anyone have experience getting a PCI gigabit card working under linux and/or a PCMCIA gigabit card for WinXP?

As far as cables go, what type will I need for a gigabit network? I assume I can't use the same cat5s I have anymore, right?

Finally, are there any compatibility issues I should be aware of with using 100MPS equipment (cards and cables) on this network, or will they work just as well on a gigabit router?

Hopefully that's not too many questions at once. :)

I really wish I had more experience in this, but I will answer these 2 to the best of my knowledge...

The cables: If you're using cat5E cables (the 'E' being the operative letter) you should be ok. I believe that is the category that is certified for gigabit networking.

Compatibility:
If the router is any decent it will switch port-by-port to lower speeds. Meaning that any machines that connect with lower-standard equipment will work just fine, just at lower speeds (i.e. 10Mb/s or 100Mb/s)
Naturally any communication between machines will be at the highest common speed, and 2 gigabit enabled machines will transfer files blazingly fast! (given that any other affected components can keep up).

The main problem with this is even with gigabit cards on each PC, as well as decent Cat6 cable, a router to share you internet connection will not run gigabit.
You'll need to get a seperate router to handle your NAT and DCHP duties, or a dedicated linux router. Then use a gigabit switch to connect all you machines to each other and uplink the switch to the router.

The cheapest that I can find would be the Linksys EG00SW found here:
http://www.compusa.com/products/prod...271&pfp=BROWSE

You'll want to be sure that you'll use the high speed of the gigabit equipment before investing this kind of money in a system. If you transfer a lot of files between machines, it will help a lot, but only to the point of the transfer limit on your HDD.

EDIT: D-Link also makes a similar switch that is slightly less expensive here:
http://www.shipitforyou.com/cgi-bin/...04071412404273

Why exactly wouldn't a gigabit router (whose uplink port is connected to my cable modem) be able to handle DHCP duties, and allow gigabit transfers between connected machines at the same time? By having that extra hop to handle DHCP, what caveat of this whole system is being avoided?

Assuming you're correct, the extra router you mention would not have to be gigabit, right? So then I could just have a normal router attached to my modem, then a gigabit hub between that router and my machines... that might not even be any more expensive then, since I won't have to fork over the dough for a gigabit *router*, just a hub.

Thanks for the info.