Are gigabit switches different from one another?

[Wutikorn]

I looked at router benchmarks and even a very good router has its maximum ethernet speed less than gigabits speed (500-800Mbps). So if I want to buy a switch that I use it to connect NAS and computers together, will have to search for switch speed? Is there something which set switch LAN apart from router LAN so that switch does not have to have good hardware?

 

[thiggins]

No. All Gigabit switches will switch all ports at line rate. We don't test LAN to LAN (switch) performance because of this.

1000 Mbps is impossible to achieve. There is always protocol overhead. Max throughput on a Gigabit Ethernet connection with TCP/IP is around 950 Mbps.

 

[System Error Message]

when you look at router speeds you want the simultaneous as single directions could have overheads or other reasons for not reaching full gigabit speeds. Many home routers use a switch chip so the CPU has 2 ports only, 1 WAN and 1 to the switch chip with LAN ports. This is the main bottleneck in many routers if it isnt the CPU.

 

[Cloud200]

There are a few metrics regarding switch performance but they only apply to the extreme of enterprise level applications.
One is latency. For gigabit there can be anywhere between a 2.0 and 16.0 µs delay introduced by the switch chip going from port to port.
Another is the buffer size. For 24 port devices this is usually anywhere from 512KB on decent unmanaged units all the way up to 18MB on multilayer devices meant for anything from core routing to SANs.

Unless you are worried about the difference between NFS and iSCSI or whether or not you will use an SDN Controller . . . you generally won't be able to tell the difference.

There are some devices on the extreme end of the scale that have issues when mixing 100mb and gigabit devices . . . but even then its only when communicating between the two.

 

[System Error Message]

Buffer only matters for store-and-forward switching.

 

[Wutikorn]

There are a few metrics regarding switch performance but they only apply to the extreme of enterprise level applications.
One is latency. For gigabit there can be anywhere between a 2.0 and 16.0 µs delay introduced by the switch chip going from port to port.
Another is the buffer size. For 24 port devices this is usually anywhere from 512KB on decent unmanaged units all the way up to 18MB on multilayer devices meant for anything from core routing to SANs.

Unless you are worried about the difference between NFS and iSCSI or whether or not you will use an SDN Controller . . . you generally won't be able to tell the difference.

There are some devices on the extreme end of the scale that have issues when mixing 100mb and gigabit devices . . . but even then its only when communicating between the two.

So I don't really need to see any detail then. Thanks!

No. All Gigabit switches will switch all ports at line rate. We don't test LAN to LAN (switch) performance because of this.

1000 Mbps is impossible to achieve. There is always protocol overhead. Max throughput on a Gigabit Ethernet connection with TCP/IP is around 950 Mbps.

Thanks!