Broadband Problem / Load Balancer

I third the switch motion. And I join in with those that have thanked you for being so generous with your time.

 

Thanks Winston

 

I spent a while on Google trying to find a few decent White Papers that offered something (explained in simple/basic terms) instead of giving the response “because I say so” – but it has been very hard to find either a diagram or a solid “best practices” documented explanation of what I’m recommending.

I think this is primarily for two reasons – first, the industry has changed a bunch over the last few years and we are moving over to virtualizing most everything – including routers. Routers run virtual and dump into switches and again I hate to say it but that just “is” the way the industry is. Switches are even virtual these days with VMware and desktop virtualization everything is changing very quickly. Second, I’m recommending/talking about a fairly niche solution that consists of small business, home and small enterprise grade hardware that ranges from new to ~5years old. Most homeowners don’t know (or care) that the neighbor jogging by streaming Pandora on her iPhone could be slowing you down or that your afternoon crash could be associated with your kid’s school bus stop across the street – a bus full of 35 kids with iPod Touch or smart phones with wifi could be enough to crush an older Linksys router depending on whatever else is going on.

It’s both about designing your network in such a way that each device has a purpose as well as using appropriate devices that do each job really well. With the tech stuff we are just lucky that we can snag stuff on eBay for $50 that some hedge fund or small business paid $400+ for just a few years back.

I found a lot of documentation about how combining and consolidating multiple hubs, routers & switches (what I call a hodge-podge network) into a single router >> multi-port switch yields much better network performance. I also found very little about why we use routers as routers and switches as switches (but not try to combine the two) because at an enterprise level it simply just “is” whereas at a small-business level there quite often isn’t the budget to build a robust network (so they hodge-podge their networks) and at the home level they try and sell an idiot-proof all-in-one solution that even grandma could use.


The technical answer is that switches handle Layer 2 network traffic and can decide where to send traffic from within the switch without needing to interface or ask the router what to do. This means that the router’s CPU & resources are freed up from that Layer2 traffic allowing the router to perform faster.


There is a tremendous amount of “background noise” on a windows network related to file & printer sharing, wireless networking and mapped drives/network storage. By using a switch you force the switch to handle all that crap – all the little tiny pings that go back & forth between your PCs looking for anyone else within their Workgroup or your wireless devices (including iPhones & Blackberry) constantly pinging the wireless access points to make sure the signal is strong.

By letting the router simply handle the bandwidth and route network traffic between the WAN and the LAN (external to internal) you can maximize its performance. By forcing your router to be an all-in-one solution (or by using a retail all-in-one device) you are bogging it down and that will greatly impact network performance.

If people are experiencing slowness or issues on their network it is most probably because they are using home/retail grade hardware for small business or even small-enterprise grade demands.

Here is a great link on small business network design & tips. It’s a bit old however very true and accurate for most home/small business applications. http://www.zdnet.com.au/10-tips-for-designing-a-small-business-network-339271594.htm

Hope that helps a little more. Sorry to be so long-winded.

 

Not long-winded ... comprehensive. Much of it is beyond me yet I am starting to see that if I plan my next upgrade properly I can obtain much better results for a modest investment, Just knowing that equation exists and is obtainable for someone my size and with my budget is a revelation. Thanks.

 

Once again Winston thank you!

 

Swan:

Adding a switch in your home network may or may not gain you any advantage. It depends on your configurations. So far in reading your many posts, I have not figured out your configuration.

If you have one and only one PC to do trading, then plugging it directly to your cable modem without any router would be the best. You only need a router if you have more than 1 PC that you want to share the cable modem bandwidth with. And if you do have more than 1 PC, then how you configure things would affect your available bandwith to your trading PC.

A switch works in layer 2 network traffic. It doesn't know how to route a packet. It can, however, eliminate Ethernet traffic collisions so it works a lot better than a hub.

A router works in layer 3 network traffic. For a home router, basically it knows to route from one PC to another within your home network. For anything else that it doesn't recognize, it would forward the routing to your ISP provider - cable modem provider.

Would adding a switch to your router be automatically benefitial? Not necessarily. (It certainly adds complexity though.) Again - depending on your configuration and your applications too.

Say if you have one and only PC at home that you connect to the Internet. In that case why would you want any router or any switch? You plug your PC into the modem. Nothing else is needed.

But... if you have set up one PC as a file server, or "media server" to gather all your MP3 songs or video clips and you have many PCs and media players with networking capability that are drawing the information from the media server, then having a switch would make sense... but - only if all your nodes are going hardwired, not wifi.

If all your nodes are going wifi, then the works still fall on the router which also offer wifi capability - switches... most of them don't. So if your PC is hooked up to the switch, and your switch is hooked up to the router, and all other nodes are going wifi... the switch is not benefiting you.

If you go wifi, the first thing you want to do is to set up your home network as a secured network with a password. (The default is wide open.) This will prevent any nosy neighbor or a passing by iphone user to tab in to your network to surf the internet and slowing you down in the process.

The first thing in order, I think, is to know your configuration, and what you would like to do. Start from there. Solutions should be designed based on the requirements and desired configurations.

BTW: Those down/up numbers from your cable modem looks very good. Depending on the actual trading app, of course, but I think if you can get 5Mbps on the downlink you are well off in most cases. May not be enough in the extreme cases like the flash crash in 2010.

Yes there are acknowledgement packets sent back to the sender. But the down/up speeds do not need to be 1:1. Say a 100-byte long package was lost and not gotten an acknowledgement, the whole package would be resent. Acknowledgement signals are not sent byte for byte. So I think having a 10 to 1 down/up ratio is good. 5 to 1 is even better of course.

 

@ Bolinomo and WinstonTJ.

Just a simple question: suppose I don't need to use wireless devices, the wireless feature is disabled, and I don't have LAN connection between local PCs: all the 3 PCs uses directly the modem/router to connect to the internet with no LAN between them.
Also one VMware VM is running over their dedicated NIC linked to the 4th ethernet port of same modem/router using very little bandwidth.
The ISP provides a 10 Mbit / 1mbit link.

With that setup, then using one of 'all-in-one' D-Link, Netgear, Linksys... modem/router with includes routers & switch features is more than enough if I take care of a simple Intel PRO PT or CT model NIC instead of those onboard e.g. Marvell's?

 

Bernard111:

I am very unclear on what you have, and what you want to do.

Throw away all the vendor names and model names for a moment. You should start with what internet access provider you have (sounds like cable modem), figure out what you want to do, then you seek for solutions, then you select your vendor and gadget and models that can provide such solutions.

The Internet access provider gives you internet access. It comes in the form of a twisted pair phone line (DSL), or a coaxial cable (TV cable), or satellite (also coaxial cable I believe), or fibre-optic (but they convert the signal to the twisted pair phone line into your home from what I understand).

There must be a gadget that convert from the twisted pair phone line or coaxial cable signals to the 10baseT or 100baseT or Gigabit Ethernet for the use by your computer equipment (unless go wifi). That's the DSL modem or cable modem, or whatever modem.

If you have only 1 PC to access that internet, you plug it right in. That's it.

If you want to have more than 1 PC (or gadget) that you want to share the internet access in your house, that's where you bring in one of those routers/switches/all-in-one/whatever.

The older gadgets provide RJ45 hardwire access only. The newer gadgets typically provide both hardwire AND wifi access. You can choose either one.

Then on top of that, and typically if you run wifi in your house, you want to add some security measures, such as using the WEP, EPA (PSK), etc.., or lock-down to the Ethernet hardware address, or using VPN, etc..

 

dont know a lot ,or if anyone mentioned it but the wireless is limited to 56bps, where the direct connection is faster

 

On a related note, we solved our very similar issues by iterating through the wifi channels in the provided modem/wifi router's config interface, in order to find the best one. Sorry if someone mentioned this already.