On 2010-01-05, Aaron Mason <simplersolut...@gmail.com> wrote: > With top notch stuff (we're talking HP Procurve/Cisco Catalyst and > Intel PRO/1000+ cards here) plus tuning for Jumbo frames, you can get > to the 95MB/sec range.
Things on the computer side (NICs, motherboard, drivers etc) affect performance much more than switches. Many of the cheaper 'web-managed' switches have very acceptable performance. I much prefer Procurves but if the budget isn't there, well-chosen cheaper switches can do pretty well. With a quick test with PCIE RTL8111B on a core2 T7200 machine and PCI-X BCM5704C on an opteron 146 (both 2GHz), using 1500 MTU and D-Link DGS-1224T and SMC GS16-Smart switches between them, I get about 540Mb/s with the re(4) transmitting, 920Mb/s with the bge(4) transmitting. Conn: 1 Mbps: 537.855 Peak Mbps: 557.250 Avg Mbps: 537.855 Conn: 1 Mbps: 923.241 Peak Mbps: 928.758 Avg Mbps: 923.241 (Last time I tried it, enabling jumbos on the bge actually made things worse, not better). I don't know much about the el-cheapo unmanaged switches, I've saved enough time in tracking down problems through having port error and traffic stats (via snmp on the dlink) that I don't bother with them at all any more.
