Mixed network components
 

Most of the stuff on my network is now 1Gbps. There are a couple of remenants that are 100Mbps. Using the switches, I can see which components (Old NAS, Dell Printer and both Wireless N routers!!!). Should I segregate these items?

If I have 4 items on a switch and one is 100Mbps, will it slow the whole switch down or just access to the 100Mbps item?

If your switch is built according to the IEEE 802.3-2008 standard, it shouldn't be a problem. The ports on the switch will negotiate according to what is attached. It would not slow down the whole switch.

It certainly wouldn't bother a Cisco switch. Only the ports that connect to those older devices should be slower, and therefore only comms to/from those devices. Everything else should be speedy.

Yea, no reason to do anything. Besides 100mb is still perfectly fine for a lot of things. Mix away.

I was more thinking of segregating them on a single switch.

I was pretty surprised to see that the wireless-N routers had 100Mbps wired ports. I guess I need to switch those out too.

I guess, most n-routers from 10 feet are around 400MB on a good day. I would be surprised if you're touching that level of traffic internally. For the bulk of what most people do the choke point is going to be your external connection.

If you're always moving large files internally then you can get some benefit from 1gb. Most of the company I work for the end user segments are 100mbs still. When I worked for IBM most of our buildings were still 10mb and things functioned fine.

The data centers are all moving to 10GigE, but it's damned expensive right now.

Scott,

I just wanted to make sure that these switches wouldn't drop in overall speed due to older stuff being connected. As I've been trying to get my network moved over to 1Gbps, I keep finding recent stuff I've purchased (Dell Printer and the Linksys "n" routers), which I thought was 1Gps turned out to be 100Mbps.

Some time late this year or early next year, I'll be sorting out an office network.

You're good then. Only the ports that require the lower speed are restricted to it. The switch will take care of all that for you.