Ok well first thing is first. There are best practices in every industry and most IT guys (I'd consider myself on the good/novice level of this scale) will tell you that you always isolate these - I've never seen (outside of a home or small business) a server closet that has computers plugged into the router. There are two other things - home/retail grade linksys routers like a WRT54G or even the newer ones like WRT310N, etc. all have a certain life span - they get old & die. Next is that they use a VERY small and slow processor which can limit the throughput even on a 1:1 wired network down to something pretty slow. The way to maximize or optimize your hardware's performance is to let each device do what it does best. A home/retail grade router is a ROUTER - not a switch. The router can use a lot of CPU and RAM just to handle switched network traffic (like if you have file sharing turned on or a Network Storage Device). These little home routers aren't robust enough to handle switching network traffic AND handling bandwidth throughput in excess of ~25mbps. A switch is a dumb device that will "switch" network traffic. It has its own processor so even at the home level you'll now have two devices, each with RAM and a CPU - your router can route traffic and your switch can switch traffic - but switches are bad at routing and routers are bad (or not always great) at switching. Windows constantly sends out ping packets to other devices on the network (think LAN/Intranet). These things can all be turned off on each Windows machine but that's a pain for your wife or your kids. OR - you can let the switch handle it because it's all internal traffic that the switch is built & designed to handle. Let's say you have a little D-Link NAS with a few movies and some music on it. If your kids want to stream a movie and you have both the NAS and the computer plugged into the router then the router has to handle that switch traffic. It's CPU & RAM will have to process & buffer the entire movie as well as your wireless traffic (think iPhones, iPads, BlackBerrys, Android, etc.). If you have a switch and both the PC and the NAS are plugged into that switch then the switch handles 100% of that movie's data transfer. You could unplug the router from the wall and still stream that movie - so this just frees up system resources on the router to do routing only functions. It makes a big difference. These little home setups end up trying to perform functions of a high-end router, switch, DHCP server, Wireless Access Point - all for about $100. What ends up happening is that the engineers make compromises so they are capable of performing each task but they don't do any of them really well (this is especially true of the routers with wireless + wired all-in-one types). Because this stuff gets so cheap and so fast you can go out and buy a few extra devices - you'll have an 8 or 16 port switch so now your wife won't need you to plug & unplug from the router. The easiest way to look at it is to view your router as a device that handles your bandwidth and assigns IPs on the network. Let the switch handle the network traffic. I'm not saying everyone MUST adhere to these rules - if you are happy with your connectivity might as well KISS and leave it alone. If you are having issues however, you can turn a home setup into something that is equal to most small prop groups, hedge funds or other larger businesses not in finance. Yes 100% - that'll give you an accurate idea of whether or not you are getting what you pay for. On the other hand, you should be getting the same numbers directly from the modem or through a router and series of switches - if not the signal has degraded along the way and you have issues.
The highest sustained draw that I've ever seen was about 20mbps (closer to 17mbps) and that was one machine during the flash crash (may 6th 20?? forget the year). There is no way that you should ever be pulling more than 5-8mbps sustained during normal trading conditions. I think you'll find that the 30mbps download is nice for netflix & youtube but where you'll really notice a difference is that you can now push 5+mbps upload. That's key. Do you notice any difference in speeds when your family is home & plugged in vs. when everyone is in school/work? EDIT: I saw a lot of people asked me questions- hope I answered them all, if not please bump & ask again or send me a PM and I'm happy to quote & reply.
Since I am on cable I have historically noticed a major difference between trading hours and nights/weekends. I am fortunate to be in an exclusively residential neighborhood so the best performance is during RTH. That is why I a stunned at the numbers on a snowy Saturday afternoon when most people are home and many at the computer. And yes, the upload is key as, I believe, is the latency.
how to get from http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...&highlight=power+supply+WinstonTJ#post2259174 to this?
I might not have been the best in school but my teachers always said I am smart. Career change - kinda got out of Finance and I'm doing IT stuff right now almost full-time. Virtualization, development and hardware compatibility testing, chatting on ET all day... Think about it... a PhD takes what ~2 years? Over the last two years I moved from Boston to NYC, worked with some pretty high-end HFT trading shops - all the way up to NYSE MM firms. Had the opportunity to work with and learn from some of the best in the business - and unlike most I took the time to learn, pay attention and be thankful for my opportunities. So I learned a lot about IT & Technology in the last two years and now I'm happy to help others and share what (little) I know on the subject.
i spent 4 hours the other day reading every one of your posts from the first. the transition is remarkable.
Given that the original post was three years ago I'll hazard a guess that he applied himself and learned. BRAVO!!
Ok, that made some sense. I have a background in IT, but more on the OS side than networking. I am also going through some network/connectivity issues. Here is my setup, maybe you can help me optimize it and hopefully everyone else will benefit. I have been having some stuttering and lag on my data feeds so that is what has prompted me to start upgrading. I did some troubleshooting with my ISP's support and everything seems to check out with my internet service and runs at the speed I am paying for when I took the old router out of the loop and connected straight to the modem. I have 3mbps/.5mpbs internet. The old wireless router is a Linksys WRV54G (purchased in 2004). Two days ago I ordered a Linksys/Cisco E4200 wireless router. I bought it directly from Linksys refurbished for $110 shipped. I hooked it up last night and immediately noticed a nice improvement in the web, both wired and wireless. My computer setup is two PC's that I trade on. Third machine is one of those little Acer desktop PC's that run on an Intel atom that I use as a webserver for a very low volume website. Fourth machine is an old laptop that I use for downloading stuff with emule. Fifth machine is my girlfriends laptop, she is also home during trading hours and surfs on her laptop via wireless. I don't run the old laptop to download with emule ever during trading hours, it is turned off. The old router didn't come close to 54mpbs wireless, but the new E4200 is giving me 65mpbs wireless and is showing that it is connecting to the two PC's at 1Gbps. I am using the onboard NIC on both of the motherboards. I will pick up two of the Intel NIC cards you suggested for the two PC's I use to trade with. I can also pick up a Linksys RV042 and use that instead of the E4200, the 4200 has a good return policy. My question is if I got rid of the E4200, I could use my old Linksys router for wireless and plug that in somewhere, but it is really tired and not nearly as fast via wireless as the new E4200 so I would prefer to get rid of it. I still need to be able to port forward to the web server. How would you suggest I set everything up? Should I buy a switch or maybe a wireless switch?
Intelligent and quick study, that's why I read all your posts. Appreciate you sharing some of this knowledge here, always learn smthg reading your replies. Keep up great work!