Home Network Switches that support LACP

[AlexEng]

Hey there,

I am building up my home network and have come to the conclusion that I need a switch that supports LACP. I was wondering if the community had any recommendations for a particular switch and or any suggestions.

Current set-up:
- ASUS RT-AC66U Wireless Router (Supports 802.11ac)
- Synology NAS 1512+
- iMac (connected via ethernet)
- MediaCenter PC (connected via ethernet)
- 2 Mac Laptops (usually connected over wireless)

Basically I'd like to get the highest speeds out of my NAS, it gets a lot of use as everything is stored on it. I will be adding some more home theater PCs that will also be accessing the network over an ethernet connection and have run out of spots on the ASUS router. Also the router doesn't support LACP, so as I am purchasing a switch I would like to get one that supports this.

I wasn't sure what the best brand to get would be. Also, I think i'll need to get a switch that is more geared towards "business" use rather than a consumer level. I wasn't sure if some brands have software on there switched that will help me mange the network.

 

[mvmanolov]

I have one of these, relatively easy to set up and can be had on e-bay new for around 100-125 (its where i got mine)
http://ca.netgear.com/business/products/switches/smart-switches/smart-switches/GS716T-200.aspx

if you do go the e-bay route make sure you get at least v.2 or v3. as the firmware on v.1 is not upgradable and some of the features are not supported..

I am quite happy with mine btw... running my mini in a LAG and getting great speeds through it

 

[freejazz-man]

What makes you think LACP will help you? LACP will only lead to greater speeds from the NAS if it is serving up two connections at once. It does nothing for one connection.

 

[AlexEng]

What makes you think LACP will help you? LACP will only lead to greater speeds from the NAS if it is serving up two connections at once. It does nothing for one connection.

Right now there is 4 computers that will simultaneously be reading data from the NAS, with some more to be added...

 

[northerngit]

Hey there,

I am building up my home network and have come to the conclusion that I need a switch that supports LACP.

I wasn't sure what the best brand to get would be. Also, I think i'll need to get a switch that is more geared towards "business" use rather than a consumer level. I wasn't sure if some brands have software on there switched that will help me mange the network.

I have a similar setup, with a Synology DS1812+ - after much reading, and experience with HP in the enterprise, this was the best value for money switch I could find. I've had it running for about a year, with absolutely no issues.

http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/products/networking-switches/product-detail.html?oid=5304944#!tab=features

They come in 8 port and 24 port options.

 

[smartmoney]

I have a LARGE setup, with a Synology DS1512+ and 3x 212j doing odd jobs (including one doing backups of important data inside my gun safe) one outside in detached shop and one serving as vpn offsite backup to my office

- New house so every room has multiple wired termination points. I have a 13port router & 3 24port switches mostly full. I have 20+ip cameras and every tv has a streaming box of some sort. 3 kids with each having xboxes and ps3's. I have one OSX server running profile manager for our macs/ipads and iphones and a windows server running minecraft for the kids as well as exchange and a server for the IP cams.

My point is there is a MASSIVE amount of data flowing inside my house. I use and abuse to Mikrotik router stuff. There is not much it cant do and its very affordable. i have multiple vlans and "port bonding" between switches and router. I have never had a steaming problem in the house either to tv boxes or files to and from computer.

Just my 2c

 

[freejazz-man]

Yeah, well you aren't going to push backplane saturation on a 24 port managed switch if you are only using 6 ports. Trying pushing gigabit on each port on that microtic

 

[drsox]

Hey there,

I am building up my home network and have come to the conclusion that I need a switch that supports LACP. I was wondering if the community had any recommendations for a particular switch and or any suggestions.

Current set-up:
- ASUS RT-AC66U Wireless Router (Supports 802.11ac)
- Synology NAS 1512+
- iMac (connected via ethernet)
- MediaCenter PC (connected via ethernet)
- 2 Mac Laptops (usually connected over wireless)

Basically I'd like to get the highest speeds out of my NAS, it gets a lot of use as everything is stored on it. I will be adding some more home theater PCs that will also be accessing the network over an ethernet connection and have run out of spots on the ASUS router. Also the router doesn't support LACP, so as I am purchasing a switch I would like to get one that supports this.

I wasn't sure what the best brand to get would be. Also, I think i'll need to get a switch that is more geared towards "business" use rather than a consumer level. I wasn't sure if some brands have software on there switched that will help me mange the network.

I also vote for Netgear. I use the GS108Tv2. I have about 30 devices linked through 4 of these - one on each floor and one as the main interconnect.

----------

What makes you think LACP will help you? LACP will only lead to greater speeds from the NAS if it is serving up two connections at once. It does nothing for one connection.

Not entirely true in my experience. I changed the connections from NAS_1>Switch_1>WinPC>Switch_1>Switch_2>NAS_2 from single to dual and found an extra 15% or so in data rate.

 

[unplugme71]

I have a LARGE setup, with a Synology DS1512+ and 3x 212j doing odd jobs (including one doing backups of important data inside my gun safe) one outside in detached shop and one serving as vpn offsite backup to my office

- New house so every room has multiple wired termination points. I have a 13port router & 3 24port switches mostly full. I have 20+ip cameras and every tv has a streaming box of some sort. 3 kids with each having xboxes and ps3's. I have one OSX server running profile manager for our macs/ipads and iphones and a windows server running minecraft for the kids as well as exchange and a server for the IP cams.

My point is there is a MASSIVE amount of data flowing inside my house. I use and abuse to Mikrotik router stuff. There is not much it cant do and its very affordable. i have multiple vlans and "port bonding" between switches and router. I have never had a steaming problem in the house either to tv boxes or files to and from computer.

Just my 2c

MASSIVE? Maybe for a typical home user.

Try pushing 2 Peta Bytes of data each day over Fiber SANs.

 

[mvmanolov]

MASSIVE? Maybe for a typical home user.

Try pushing 2 Peta Bytes of data each day over Fiber SANs.

hahaha, that is one big ****
care to relate what you do this for? I'm quite curious....

 

[unplugme71]

hahaha, that is one big ****
care to relate what you do this for? I'm quite curious....

It's for the company I work for. We do a lot of client hosting and some clients can store in excess of 20TB of data. Multiply that several times for each environment (Prod, Cert, Test, Dev) and by the number of clients, plus corporate data, and you move butt-loads of data per day.

 

[mvmanolov]

It's for the company I work for. We do a lot of client hosting and some clients can store in excess of 20TB of data. Multiply that several times for each environment (Prod, Cert, Test, Dev) and by the number of clients, plus corporate data, and you move butt-loads of data per day.

haha,
Ok, so not you personal home net
nevertheless still staggering...

 

[funkboy]

LACP is likely not what you need in order to improve performance, especially over wireless. Even over wired GigE, as long as whatever you're doing is a single TCP stream, it won't get load-balanced over multiple links. LACP is great for servers where you have a whole lot of flows that hashing algorithms can spread out over the links in the bundle, but for a single stream it's not going to help.

The first thing you'll want to do is increase the default values in your network stack: http://rolande.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/performance-tuning-the-network-stack-on-mac-osx-10-6/

Have a look at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/ . They benchmark a whole lot of NASs & wireless devices in various scenarios simulating a situation pretty close to what you're describing.

If you want real storage performance you'll need to dump the wireless though. Options are either direct attach with ESATA, Thunderbolt, or Firewire, or if you're willing to give up some speed in exchange for networked storage convenience then a GigE switch like the Cisco SA300 series will get the job done. If GigE isn't fast enough for you and you're sure that your NAS &/or your machines are actually filling up GigE with storage traffic then you'll need to go to 10GE, which will get expensive fast.

My guess however is that wired GigE should be sufficient for your needs if you're able to optimize the software on both ends of the transfer to actually use all the available bandwidth. Unless you have benchmark data & graphs proving that you're really pushing ~1gbps across the wire (that's gigabits, not gigabytes), I doubt that gigabit ethernet will be the bottleneck.

That said, I'd be really interested to see how much bandwidth you're actually getting with 802.11ac. If your basestation supports the 5ghz band with 40 or 80mhz channels then it should be quite fast indeed if it's configured with the right performance tweaks.

 

[unplugme71]

haha,
Ok, so not you personal home net
nevertheless still staggering...

haha

No, my home network on a busy day probably pushes 1TB per hour. No where near saturated or remotely close to what the company does

 

[mvmanolov]

haha

No, my home network on a busy day probably pushes 1TB per hour. No where near saturated or remotely close to what the company does

Jees, 1TB/h that is pretty crazy too for a home net... You are just a data-hog, aren't you!

 

[unplugme71]

Jees, 1TB/h that is pretty crazy too for a home net... You are just a data-hog, aren't you!

Well you factor in streaming, downloading HD and SD movies from iTunes, iRadio, backups, etc.. it adds up quick.

If I had more room in my place, I'd develop a 4 network system like we have at work.

2 networks for redundancy, 1 for management, 1 for backup. That way you have high availability and reduced saturation on your main lines when backups are running. Granted mine won't be fiber channels - just good old copper wires. haha

 

[freejazz-man]

Not entirely true in my experience. I changed the connections from NAS_1>Switch_1>WinPC>Switch_1>Switch_2>NAS_2 from single to dual and found an extra 15% or so in data rate.

Sorry but you must be confused, or perhaps using a poor cable prior. Maybe before there were multiple clients of the NAS and you didn't realize it?

 

[drsox]

Sorry but you must be confused, or perhaps using a poor cable prior. Maybe before there were multiple clients of the NAS and you didn't realize it?

No to all three.

 

[freejazz-man]

Well considering that LACP cannot do anything to increase the maximum throughput of a single point-to-point connection, I'm gonna go with you being confused!

 

[Griggi]

No to all three.

Have you measured the utilization of that link prior to using LACP?

 

[donlab]

It's for the company I work for. We do a lot of client hosting and some clients can store in excess of 20TB of data. Multiply that several times for each environment (Prod, Cert, Test, Dev) and by the number of clients, plus corporate data, and you move butt-loads of data per day.

Storage & Backup admin here... We backup 25TB nightly to a 130TB datadomain which gets 6:1 dedup. Then all that data gets written to tape during the day. Thats where I see the most data movement and where speed is critical. We store about 500TB of active data and Petabyte of inactive data on tape. I don't really see so much backend data movement on our VMAX disk array during prodution hours to write home about.. maybe 1.5-2.5 GB/s sustained and about 28-35,000 IOs. Dealing with this amount of data day to day I just like to keep things simple and a apple airport extreme gen 6 works for me at home.

 

[unplugme71]

Storage & Backup admin here... We backup 25TB nightly to a 130TB datadomain which gets 6:1 dedup. Then all that data gets written to tape during the day. Thats where I see the most data movement and where speed is critical. We store about 500TB of active data and Petabyte of inactive data on tape. I don't really see so much backend data movement on our VMAX disk array during prodution hours to write home about.. maybe 1.5-2.5 GB/s sustained and about 28-35,000 IOs. Dealing with this amount of data day to day I just like to keep things simple and a apple airport extreme gen 6 works for me at home.

That is a lot of data. I do like to keep things simple too but sometimes its fun tinkering with enterprise stuff at home too. That's how I learn a lot and either recommend or fix stuff at work from what I experienced at home. However, I'll never be able to afford 40PB of storage at home, nor hundreds of blade servers, or fiber anything.

 

[drsox]

Have you measured the utilization of that link prior to using LACP?

Yes. I also measured it again with the same cables and setup after disabling the bonding.

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Well considering that LACP cannot do anything to increase the maximum throughput of a single point-to-point connection, I'm gonna go with you being confused!

Comment deleted for taste and decorum.