GigaBit Ethernet to the Desktop

With the current rate of increase in the size of user datasets, combined with the continuing increase in PC processing power, the file transfer abilities of 100Base-T Ethernet are being pushed to their limits. Often, a multi-gigabyte dataset must be transferred, which can require a significant amount of time.

One solution to these long transfer times is to run GigaBit Ethernet between desktop systems and a server. In addition, the recent appearance of 10GigaBit Ethernet allows GigaBit Ethernet to be used in an enterprise-wide manner, instead of just for a small workgroup.

As an indication of the future, computers from both Apple and Dell now have GigaBit adapters standard.

This web page benchmarks several GigaBit adapters, to show the performance that GigaBit adapters can provide, and to determine which GigaBit adapters work best in a desktop workstation.

Several people at the San Diego Supercomputer Center provided technical assistance in planning and performing these benchmarks. Material support was provided by SMC. Additionally, the testing was performed at the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

• Index
• Cards Tested
• Test Description
• Systems Tested
• Server Benchmark Results
• LMbench Results --- UDP Latency
• LMbench Results --- TCP Latency
• LMbench Results --- RPC over UDP Latency
• LMbench Results --- RPC over TCP Latency
• LMbench Results --- Connection Cost
• LMbench Results --- Bandwidth
• NFS Results
• FTP Results
• Challenges
• Conclusion