Is this the year for gigabit Ethernet?
 
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now if only i could find an affordable NAS with a fiber port

im not sure how to vote , coz i dont have a network setup, but i think i sorta upgraded to dual gigabit LAN ports with my a8n-sli deluxe, from my crappy old P4 pc from three years ago which only has a 100mb/s LAN. So if the question is 'do you have gigabit lan ports?' then i wud vote yes, but if the question is 'have u got a gigabit lan setup?' i wud vote no. And i dont think its necessary to upgrade LAN to gigabit necesarily, but that certainly is occuring coz mobo manufactureres r puttin em on I/O Panels more frequently , so yes i wud say the year for gigabit lan is coming, but i doubt its this year

I agree "the year of the gigabit is coming but not this year." We already have 2 gigabit NIC's in the network but they won't do us any good until the price of switches and routers comes out of the stratosphere. Soooo, we'll plug along at 100Mbps until the routers drop below $100 and the switches reach a sub-$50 level.  8O

I have perfectly no use for it... 100Mbits is more then enough to transfer files up to 20GB

For about 2 years that I have been looking at gigabit routers and switchs. As others have said they are to expensive still.
 
Last year I started to add Gigabit NICs to the LAN I manage. 5 over 9 are now Gigabit ready... but I'm not sure if 2006 will be the year of change
 
Vtrain

 
 
 
Exactly, why spend the money??

 
depends which amount of money and also your needs...
 
Vtrain

This is true, depending on the size of the network and what you are actually doing on the network.

u know when transfering small files like 10KB (lots of them) the 100mbps goes only 10%. only files over 10MB got max network useage
 
1gbps would be good if you will transfer 50MB at a time or its a waste

 
Man i remember quotes like this when the 100Mbps router came out...    (Just different file sizes)  I personally bought the linksys 10/100/1000 managed switch for my home network so i could learn the technology(thats what i keep telling myself). 8)  
 
As for large file transfers and LAN parties it is a great upgrade...
 
~Cheers

YES, YES, and YES. I already got my Cat 6 cables (not nesseary to Ftr proofinf) and my Belkin 8 port switch, most my PC are Gb but some need new NICs.
 
DOWN with WiFi, YAY go Wires - im a Network Purist,

I will add a poll about this subject also.
 
Make sure the Gigabit you get is pci-e x1. Many MoBo's have a crippled PCI based Gigabit. IF you have a PCI based Gigabit on-board there are a few solutions availible. I know of three off-hand:
 
ROSEWILL RC-401
INTEL 1000-PT
BYTECC BT-PEGL
 
These add-ons are availible at major O-L-R's and should cost under $40.
 
The Rosewill and Intel should have NO Vista issues, and a driver IS availible. The Bytecc is an unknown chip that was photoshopped out. But its layout looks similar to the Rosewill, so maybe an Agere ET1310B (now LSI)
 
OnBoard indicator is a Realtek 8110 series, this is PCI. Worse are the 82xx series that are only 10/100. BUT, if the chipset is RealTek 8111b, you're OK, and are already there.
 
Finally I've seen MoBo's with 2 RJ45's one is PCI and the other is PCI-e. I would consult the literature, and/or architecture diagrams.
 
BTW, I'm very surprised to find that many newer boards are still using PCI interface. Obviously, due to rush-to-market.
 
Good luck, hope this helps a byte.
 
f61

Yes, with gigabit the PC is very important also.  With PCI, you will be lucky to get over 240mbit.  This still isn't too bad.  Dropping file transfer times by half over 100mbit is worthwhile if you transfer a lot of large files.
 
But to really push it, a very modern PC is needed, with PCI-E nic.
 
And no matter what they say on the benchmarks, in the real world, your gigabit NAS won't go much over 100mbit also.  You need a hotrod server to really push the limit.