Gigabit Network
 

Say you are transfer large files from computer to computer over a network. But a normal 100mb switch aint transfering them fast enough.

How much of a change will i see if i changed over to a Gigabit Network. Also would i need to redo the cableing or? If so id never do it Because thats aton of work. But if all i had to change was the switch and addapters it might be worth it for the xtra speed.

It depends on the network and devices invloved. In an office environment with high performance servers, the difference is significant. Not the 10x improvement that clock speed would suggest, but somewhere in the 5x ballpark. In a home network, it's unlikely that your pc's can exceed 100M.

If you are transfering files over a WAN, you can't go any faster than the slowest link.

CAT6 cable contains four pairs of copper wire and unlike CAT5, utilizes all four pairs. CAT6 supports Gigabit (1000 Mbps) Ethernet and supports communications at more than twice the speed of CAT5e, the other popular.

To get pure Gigabit, you'd want to switch to cat6 cabling -- so yes.. you'd likely have to redo the cables, unless you happen to have 5e right now..

Ultimately, having to update NICs and cabling isn't really worth it, especially for a home user. If you need speedy connections between only two computers, you could try serial connections like firewire..

Well the computers are in diffrent rooms so i cant realy do firewire. And it is in a office. All the cables are cat5e. Since id half to redo the cables im going to elect to not do it. The office is always complaining to me that there quickbooks file takes to long to load and takes to long to look up customers and stuff. the file is about 200 megs and is shared over 3 computers at the same time. it takes 2-3 mins just to search for a part#. I realy think quickbooks is poorly designed for networking. Having only 1 files makes it hard to network. If it was multiple files id think it would network alot better.

Yeah, I'd agree with that.
Have you considered Sage Line 50 or 100.
They are more designed for small business use over networks.

When I ran Quickbooks I found I got better performance by having the app running on the same server as the database and not running locally on the client machine. Although you may get a slow inital program load time of 2-3 minutes, once the db was open we were able to navigate records much more quickly.

and yes, it does suck for your purpose, one of my resume skills around that time was "migrated finance dept. to SAP from quickbooks based accounting system" :)

You may find the switch to gigabit worthwhile. With Cat 5e you will see a performance increase if you have gigabit ethernet cards on the clients and network gear. I use 5e cabling on a ghostcast server with a gigabit switch and gigabit clients connected directly to it. I saw a nice speed increase in casting times once I used the gigabit switch over an older 10/100.

Cat5e is rated to 350MB, Cat5 to 100. I think Cat6 and 6e are 550 and 1000 respectively but I could be wrong. 6 isn't even a standard yet...i'm not sure why there is such a long delay in that process.

If you've got Cat5e running in the office, and assuming it was cleanly installed with no kinks or sharp bends, and everything terminated correctly, and the runs are not too long, you'll find that they can support speeds much higher than 10/100 -- perhaps not all the way up to 1000, but pretty close. I'd say if the speed issue is a problem, consider getting the gigabit cards and test it out. We've done that in our office and found that the speed increase has been well worth it. If you're not sure about the cables, I'd recommend getting them tested and validated, the way we did.

Don’t forget that hard drive read and write speeds are another bottle neck you may be hitting, not the network speeds. Further, make sure all adapters routers and switches implement use jumbo frames. Without them, you will not notice a real increase in speeds.

for transferring video it was excellent... 4Gb files copied from server to desktop in about 3-4 minutes.

For your purposes, you'd see a modest increase.

anyone know a good way to test the cabling i have now? like a app i can run or something to check them? id rather check them my self than pay someone if i can. the cables could be my speed problem i dont know. most of them are like 80 foot long.

open up one of the recepticles and pull the cable out... you may be able to see the wire jacket and it will say it on the side.

As mentioned you won't see a 10x improvement in bandwidth, but even 2x is a very nice change. If the existing 10/100 net is already busy the additional headroom could be a huge win for QuickBooks as you cut out collisions and the associated overhead. With the price of Gb cards/mb's/switches these days it's definitely worth a try.

i ordered 2 Linksys GB cards and a GB Switch. If it dont help i will buy some cat6 and run the lines.

Good deal.

For the small db and quickbooks type of applications I've migrated, the raw throughput wasn't the problem so much as contention, collisions, and resulting latency. Reducing transaction time is often key for these apps with a multitude of lock/read/compute/write/unlock sequences. QB is not optimal in this regard.

This is the right direction, especially if any segments are shared.

Agreed totally. I mean, when you think about it, the HDD throughput isn't all that fast itself.

Client HD transfer rates don't make as much difference for this kind of work. Shared QuickBooks access means lots of small transactions. Most of it will be Server -> memory without touching the local HD. The network (and server) is the HD.

Another question to ask is:
How many are on this netwok segment?
Are you making use of a hub or a switch?
Are you splitting the switch into VLANs?
How many switches or hubs sit between the users and the servers?
Is there a firewall in between?

This can make a hell of a difference, particularly with the accounting package.
A hub will broadcast to all the pc's on the line. Collisions will slow you down.
a Switch will learn who's where on its interfaces and will then pass data directly from one to another without a broadcast.

If you were to take thew quickbooks server and move it off your server network or switch and move it onto the switch used by those in accounting, it would also increase their speed. Some other tweaks can be made on the machine too.