2

I'm busy upgrading my dedicated web server. The server only serves web users over the internet.

It seems to me that any NIC speed over 100Mbps may be overkill considering all traffic is coming from the internet..?

Are there any hosters out there that provide fast enough peering that would make a 1000Mbps a requirement in a web server..?

2 Answers 2

8

Of course there are providers that would make it worth having GigE.

So you're serving to "web users over the internet". Right, so is that 3 visits per day or 3 million? If you're not running into performance issues with your current 100Mpbs setup, then don't bother upgrading.

That said, nearly every single server that's been sold in the last, say 4 years (possibly longer) has come with GigE on-board by default.

3
  • Thanks, 500k pageviews a day currently. Average page size 50k. Of course, a 1Mbps connection could serve that.. ;-) I'm more looking from the perspective of provider bandwidth.. Many providers still only provide 100Mbps connections and charge for faster cards.. Apr 24, 2011 at 19:45
  • Like I said, if you're not running into performance problems, then don't bother. It's quite likely you'll run into database-related disk IO contention before saturating your network card.
    – EEAA
    Apr 24, 2011 at 19:50
  • Dont bother. Go with what you need and pay for. The boarrd has 1gbit anyway, and a provider will gladly upgrade your banwidth in a short time frameshould it be needed.
    – TomTom
    Apr 24, 2011 at 20:33
1

Unless you're using more than 100Mbps in uplink bandwidth, your only real benefit in 1Gbps will come from accessing your other servers (DB, storage, etc) at the same hosting provider.

4
  • Which, sorry to say, indicates a very low performance setup to start with. A backend switch is not that expensive. My servers talk to each other behind the back of provider and only my frontend router talks to my provider ;)
    – TomTom
    Apr 24, 2011 at 20:34
  • @TomTom So, you use 10Gbps ethernet or Infiniband to talk to your other servers on the backend? How cheap are the backend switches for those? I'm curious, since you say that having a 1Gbps NIC on a server would be "very low performance".
    – Hyppy
    Apr 24, 2011 at 20:38
  • Yeah, it is still pretty low performance, we only do 10m views a month currently. We run on three servers at the moment, all with 1Gbps NIC's.. Decided to scale up rather than out now, hence the move to one bigger server. Just wanted some practical experience around 100Mbps vs 1000Mbps. Faster does not always mean better.. Apr 24, 2011 at 22:08
  • 1
    Curreently I use 4gbit backend, using a 4 port network card frmo Intel. The switch has 48 ports and costs around 650 usd.... make the math. Now, infinivand is better than 10g. I can get infiniband on the nmotherboards (mobos cheaper than a 10g ethernet card) and can get a 8 port switch for less than 1000 usd ;) All new servers I buy now have infiniband on board or are easly addable via UIO port (a supermicro special card format that basically replaces part of the motherbaord).
    – TomTom
    Apr 25, 2011 at 10:26

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .