Would a Gb 24-port switch be better able to handle more than a Gb 8-port switch?

[PostmanPot]

Good morning all.

Might be a silly question.

Scenario is that a company's server is connected to an 8-port switch to provide LAN, WLAN, ADSL, etc. to quite a few people. So the 8-port is handling quite a bit of stuff.

They're reporting that wireless connections are always dropping. One of the IT guys there thinks it's because the 8-port switch isn't able to handle everything being thrown at it? He reckons a 24-port would handle things better because it's bigger? Even though not more than 8 ports would be used on the 24-port switch.

In my limited networking experience, I don't think that it's the 8-port acting up, and that it's something else along the lines acting up. But of course I could be wrong.

I was hoping for some advice here.

8-port is a D-Link GigaExpress DGS-1008D 8 port 10/100/1000 gigabit un-managed switch - auto-MDI/MDIX , 8k MAC address , 256k ram buffer per device

24-port they'd upgrade to would be a D-Link GigaExpress DGS-1024D 24 port 10/100/1000 gigabit un-managed layer2 switch - auto-MDI/MDIX , 8k MAC address , 512k ram buffer per device , rackmount ready

Could the increased buffer of the 24-port help?

TIA!

 

[syntax]

i seriously doubt the 24 port switch will make a difference.

 

[PostmanPot]

Me too. But the 24-port does have more buffer. What would that mean, gurus?

 

[MickZA]

The buffers reduce the chance of dropping packets, if you're not dropping any at the moment don't worry about it.

 

[PostmanPot]

Thanks, will check it out.

 

[ponder]

Wireless dropping the connection is not related to the switch I would say. Check the AP logs, if the wired LAN side does not have issues then it's not the switch.

 

[Conradl]

A switch has a fabric that can process packets at a certain rate. This means that while you may have 8 ports, and each port can handle 1GB, the fabric (the part that connects all the ports), may only work at 4GB; i.e. all the ports will be unable to run at full speed, since the fabric runs out of capacity. Moving from 8 - 24 ports increases the fabric capacity.

RAM buffers are used to buffer incoming data and prevent the switch from dropping packets. Assume that you had 7 machines (each 1GB) connecting to a server of also 1GB - the server port would be overloaded if each device was transmitting at 100%.

Having said that, four 15k SAS disks, will run a file server 1GB network at around 100% - assuming a sustained file copy via iSCSI to local disk. Running 8 regular machines, on a simple network, will simply not be able to generate enough traffic to stress the switch and cause it to drop packets. If you were to replace the switch , and it fixed the problem, then it would be a faulty switch and not overloading....

 

[PostmanPot]

Thanks ponder & Conradl.