Still Use 2 Ethernet Ports With Only 1 Switch?
by Jesus Ali
on
Jul 22, 2008 at 9:31:29 pm
Yo, everyone.
For the time being, my IT staff is NOT giving me a dedicated switch to use only for metadata. They want to do things with VLANs, which they insist will still protect the data from cross chatter. I don't really understand how it works, but that's irrelevant.
Anyways, here is my main question: if your computers are all going to the same gigabit ethernet switch, is there any benefit to using BOTH (2) ethernet jacks on the machines?
Does it help the Client Macs to be able to send Metadata out of only 1 port and use the other for general networking, even when both of those ports eventually terminate in the same switch? (Keeping separate data paths, not mixing metadata packets with general network data packets on the way back to the switch).
Or is the "inside" of the switch the point where things get "tangled" and thus benefit from separation?
If I can't have a dedicated metadata switch should I just use 1 ethernet cable per computer?
Re: Still Use 2 Ethernet Ports With Only 1 Switch? by Ernesto Sanchez on Jul 23, 2008 at 5:55:03 am
Nothing is wrong with using VLANs. The only caveat is to keep an eye out for latency which is a big no no for Metadata. I would only be concerned if the switch is heavily taxed from say a small render farm using the "public vlan." If the switch is beefy enough even this shouldn't be an issue.
