How we did it

Having consulted with small office and home office and small to midsize businesses, we figured that reproducing their environment would not call for a state-of-the-art environment. So, we put each of the Gigabit Ethernet cards we were sent in a 350-MHz AMD K6-3 based Novell IntraNetWare 4.11 server and then in a 350-MHz AMD K6-3 Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server. To make sure the Win2000 Server was not affected by earlier tests, we used PowerQuest's DriveImagePro to restore the Win2000 Server to a clean condition after each test. It was easier to change the drivers in the NetWare server, so no extreme measures were required between tests. Both servers were patched to the most recent levels.

We then connected the servers, and then connected as many PCs as we could directly to the vendor's Gigabit Ethernet switch. When the vendor sent us a four-port switch, we connected one port to our existing 10/100 hub. Once we were wired, we ran a series of performance tests. We used Novell's Perform3 synchronized traffic test to determine Novell network throughput. When we were testing the Gigabit Ethernet card in our Win2000 Server, we used RhinoSoft's FTP Voyager on our clients to communicate with Microsoft's FTP server. In all cases, we measured the throughput for one, two and four simultaneous clients. When we were testing the Gigabit Ethernet card in the Novell server, the Win2000 Server also ran the Perform3 test, so we had five machines testing the Gigabit Ethernet card in the Novell server.

After the performance tests, we left each switch in place for several days to see if any problems would turn up in regular use. All the products were well behaved.

At the end of the testing, we reconnected the equipment with the 10/100 cards we usually use, and connected everything back to the Linksys 10/100 switching hub we normally use. We then reran all of the tests to see what sort of performance difference there was between the previous generation equipment and the new stuff.

All of the vendors sent us one or more PCI-based Gigabit Ethernet card. 3Com sent us a PCI-X-based card. Compex and SMC sent us 64-bit PCI cards. Compex, D-Link, Linksys and SMC sent us 32-bit PCI cards. Our servers were 32-bit PCI based servers, which gave us a moment of concern - the PCI specifications say all PCI cards should be compatible, but we've heard that story before. We found that all of the cards worked in the 32-bit PCI bus.

3Com and Compex sent us pure Gigabit Ethernet switches, while D-Link, Linksys and SMC sent us gigabit to 10/100 switches. Each of the 10/100 switches had a single Gigabit Ethernet port and eight to 24 10/100 switches. Only Compex sent us a pure gigabit switch and several gigabit network interface cards, so we also installed the additional gigabit NIC into a 533-MHz Celeron based Windows 98SE PC.

We ignored the management options on the more sophisticated switches, because it is not likely they would be used in smaller SOHO and small to midsize business environments. If you are outsourcing your network management, and your provider has a way of connecting to your network, you may want to consider manageable devices.

Review: Small offices going Gigabit