Home Networking Question

[RitualOfTheTrout]

Ok I have a small network setup to share a printer and our dsl connection. My girlfriend mom might be able to give me some older pcs from her work and i was thinking of setting up one of them as mainly a file sharing pc. Mostly for mp3s.. so my question is this.. is a 100mb network fast enough to stream the mp3s to both computers?

I was thinking if i set the buffer in winamp up higher it might help to.. I think it should be no problem as there is rarely any other traffic other than the internet sharing. But i just wanted to make sure.

 

[Scared0o0Rabbit]

100Mbit should be more than plenty by more than a lot.

 

[racketboy]

yeah it will be enough.

I do it all the time.

Although if you're like me, you'll become addicted to speed for stuff like video and you'll be craving gigabit

 

[IBarracudaI]

even 10mbit is more than enough for mp3 streaming... hehe

 

[RitualOfTheTrout]

I figured as much..

I am using CAT 5e cable. The only one i saw that was faster was CAT 6. and the only thing it was really needed for was mission critcal video editing or something.

As for video streaming i dont think ill be doing alot of that. Most movies and tv shows i download i put onto dvd to watch on tv. It seems to make even poorly encoded video files look much less blocky.

 

[Curtis]

Cat5e will take gigabit ethernet, I'm fairly sure. I really don't know of any advantages of Cat6. Perhaps it is more stable over longer runs?

 

[Scared0o0Rabbit]

shouldn't be an issue since cat5 is stable up to like 300 feet or something like that without a signal repeater.

 

[Link Hylia]

100 Meters ~ 328 feet ~ 109 yards is the theoretical maximum

recommended max is 90 meters (295 feet)

for 100 Base TX ethernet cable

http://www.duxcw.com/faq/network/cablng.htm

repeaters are made for longer runs, or use a network Switch if you need longer runs

 

[it290]

Although if you're like me, you'll become addicted to speed for stuff like video and you'll be craving gigabit

Are you talking about raw DV or something? Because I stream divx movies and stuff all the time over 100mbit, with no problems (altho seeking is a bit slower, but that's more likely a software issue). Even with big raw files, it seems like hard drives would still be the bottleneck at 100, let alone gigabit.

 

[Curtis]

I think you're getting your bits and bytes muddled, it290. There is no way a modern HD would be maxed out on a 100mbit connection. Realistic throughput on such a connection would be about 1-2 Megabytes per second, given packet overheads, collisions and other overheads.

 

[racketboy]

Originally posted by it290@Jan 27, 2004 @ 04:32 AM

Although if you're like me, you'll become addicted to speed for stuff like video and you'll be craving gigabit

Are you talking about raw DV or something? Because I stream divx movies and stuff all the time over 100mbit, with no problems (altho seeking is a bit slower, but that's more likely a software issue). Even with big raw files, it seems like hard drives would still be the bottleneck at 100, let alone gigabit.

Not necesarily streaming.

Just copying files to and from my file server

Transfering a few gigs can a wait

 

[it290]

Yeah, true. It can take a bit with those large files.

And Curtis, I know you're right from a factual standpoint, but it seems like copying large files over the network generally occurs at about the same speed as copying from one HD to another on your average machine. It's probably just a psychological thing, however.

 

[Curtis]

Probably.