Would 1000BASE-T clients see benefits if connected to a 10GBase-T server via a 10Gbe switch

Question

We have a network of multiple client machine connected to a 24 port gigabit 1000Base-T switch in our office, which then connects to a local share server with another gigabit port

One of our new local share server has 10Gbe ports (x2, RJ45).

If we were to replace our switch with a 10Gbe one to connect to the new share server, would there be any visible improvement to the client machines still connected on regular gigabit ports?

I understand, we're not magically improving the gigabit ports capacity but does the 10gbe connection from the switch itself allow for better concurrency of access from the different clients or would that be negligible?

Answer 1

You would definately see a benefit. You are sharing the 1Gbit link to your server with several clients so your bottleneck would be a the 1Gbit link to your server. Once you have 10Gbit connected, that pipe to your server has increased and you can server those clients much better concurrently.

So imagine two clients downloading files from the shared server at the same time, they would in turn share that 1Gbit uplink to the server which means that both clients would never utilize the full 1Gbit connection as they need to share the 1Gbit uplink. Once you have 10Gbit installed, you will end up with a far greater pipe to accommodate those clients.

Just be careful in regards to other hardware on your server. For example the type of disks you are using could then become the bottleneck if the read/write I/O of the disks isn't sufficient to provide multiple concurrent connections and still expecting everyone to utilize their full 1Gbit connection.

Hope this helps you on your quest.

SleepyMan

Answer 2

It depends on your bandwidth utilization. If your current 1G connections to the server are not fully utilized, then you won't get any benefit from 10G. Although there's nothing bad in 10G, it may be useful in the future. If your current connections are fully loaded, then you will rid of oversubscription by using 10G, which will improve user experience.