Installation

As you can imagine, installation was a breeze; there's no complicated settings to mess with like the SSID, WEP Keys, channel, etc., since these are wired network adapters. All that I needed to do was shutdown, remove the old network adapter (a Linksys LNE100TX v2.0 from like 1999), install the new D-Link Gigabit adapter, and then power up the PC. Then when Windows XP booted up, I just had to insert the included driver CD and point to the directory with the drivers on it; Windows installed the drivers (v6.23) fine and without a reboot, the PC was ready to go.

Woohoo, Gigabit!.

The D-Link DGE-530T's option.

Some considerations to note relate to Ethernet specifications; just like before, cable length is limited to 100m. (Without using a device such as a repeater) Additionally, you may want to keep your CAT-5 cables away from strong sources of electrical interference. Installation of the switch involved... plugging the power in and then plugging end stations into it. That's it; there's not much to say unless you want to talk about the topology issues, which are pretty boring. All you need to know is that a switch is better than a regular hub (which you don't see in many consumer SOHO products anymore) since it segments whatever's connected to each of its ports; hence traffic from one segment to another only goes between the two and thus this reduces network usage leading to higher performance.

Another more important issue revolves around the fact that this is a PCI Network Adapter, and hence, will ultimately be limited to the performance of the PCI bus. If you look at the hard numbers, 1000Base-T is spec'd to provide a 1000Mbps data rate; this roughly translates into 125MB/s or 119MB/s depending on what you view as a "Megabyte". The PCI bus is spec'd to provide a 133MB/s data rate. As you can see, these two numbers are very close, leaving little apparent room for other PCI devices. However, this isn't the full story as first you'll note that not many storage solutions can read, much less write, at a sustained speed of 119MB/s! And, of course, all the layers of networking specifications take up some bandwidth to provide things like addressing schemes and other meta-information, thus reducing the effective data rate of a network far below its spec'd rate.

However, many in the industry have taken note of this bandwidth discrepancy, and have taken action; for example, some of Intel's chipset support the CSA bus, a direct link to the North Bridge that was meant for use with onboard Gigabit Ethernet Adapters; thus the network traffic doesn't ride the PCI bus, freeing up its bandwidth for other devices such as perhaps a soundcard, or a SCSI card. At the same time, it's worthy to note that most chipsets nowadays have moved most stuff such as SATA and EIDE controllers and USB ports off of the PCI bus and given them a direct link to the South Bridge, also reducing reliance on PCI bandwidth.

Testing

As we all know, numbers don't usually tell the truth; going by pure numbers alone, Gigabit Ethernet would have to be 10 times faster than my current setup, but often other factors are present that reduce the overall performance. I tested the D-Link equipment both using Ixia's QCheck Program, a bandwidth-checking program, and by doing a file transfer test of 300MB of files. I first tested 100Base-T performance by leaving my current Linksys LNE100TX v2.0 adapters in and connecting the two computers through D-Link's DGS-1008D Gigabit Switch; since both cards only supported 100Base-T the speed would be limited to this spec. I then upgraded both PCs to the D-Link DGE-530T Gigabit adapters, and again plugged them into D-Link's Gigabit switch for testing. At both times, the only devices attached to the switch were the two test stations.

Here's what I found: D-Link's Gigabit Ethernet is undoubtedly faster than Fast Ethernet, but not many, many times faster. Response time was unaffected, as you might have expected, as both tests reported a < 1ms response time at all times.

As you can see, in the synthetic bandwidth test Gigabit Ethernet showed a 3x improvement over Fast Ethernet. This is impressive, but what does it mean in real-world terms? I mean, for most everyday things, 100Base-T is plenty fast enough. I decided to do a file transfer test by transferring about 300MB of files several times between the two computers and timing each test. Here are the results:

As you can see, the Gigabit setup averaged about 25s per test, while my old network setup could only muster a 42s time. While this is a great improvement, it isn't a 3x faster improvement. I think the decrease in actual performance may have come from the fact that other devices were using the PCI bus at the same time the network card was, thus reducing overall performance. However, this speed takes the cake as far as I'm concerned, as it's the fastest I've ever seen, and if you're used to wireless networking speeds now, these speeds will be a godsend.

Just for reference, I used the QCheck program to do a localhost-to-localhost TCP bandwidth check, to test the "speed" when the network wasn't involved. At all times, I got a data rate of 727Mbps - this should give you an idea of the other limiting factors that decrease the overall speed of a solution.

Conclusion

Going by the results, the D-Link Gigabit equipment is certainly an improvement over 100Base-T. Reducing the file transfer time of 300MB of files by 17s is no small wonder, and thus you're guaranteed increases in performance. What I'm more concerned with is the actual noticeable improvements to the end user. Certainly, when going from a wireless network to a wired one, most people would notice the speed increase, since large file transfers over wireless networks are usually an agonizingly slow process. However, in going from 100Base-T to 1000Base-T, how much of the performance increase will we notice? In a SOHO environment, or one where large file/data transfers aren't too common, the performance increase noted may be minimal. However, I do believe these products have a use; if you truly use your network to its maximum capacity and have a "wired" house with many connected devices, these D-Link products will do much improve your network's performance. If nothing, the 8-port switch is a great upgrade over any hub you may have, and you'll notice the difference immediately. If however, all you do is browse the Internet through one or two computers, these products probably aren't for you.

Pros

• Easy to setup
• Backwards compatible; works with existing products and cables
• Much faster than 100Base-T
• No problems encountered
• No issues with wireless security

Cons

• Not needed if you don't have a traffic-heavy network

Finally, I'd like to extend a big thanks to D-Link for making this review possible!

 

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