100Mbps and Gigabit switch on the same LAN

Question

I have a simple 10/100 router at home. Suppose I connect a gigabit switch to one of its ports and several gigabit devices to the switch.

Will the gigabit devices be able to communicate full speed?

Or does the performance degrade to comply with 10/100 on the other side of the switch?

Solution 1

The GB devices will communicate through the switch at GB speed but any traffic transiting the router will be limited to 10/100.

Solution 2

Hubs are a thing of the past. All recent devices are switches. Each line runs at full speed. Occasionally there is an autonegotiation problem and a line is set to the wrong speed, but this is not directly related to having other slower devices on the same switch.

Solution 3

I just set this up at my house two weeks ago. It works fine. Gigabit switch runs at gigabit (as it should) for things that have gigabit nics and 100 for the rest. I have read some places that some gigabit switches will only be as fast as the slowest device connected. I do not know if this is true, but I bought the Netgear GS108 Switch and it does not do that.

Comments

[MikeyB]

Changed your wording... it's not a subnet.

[Izzy]

superuser.com

[MikeyB]

If it were true, it would be a hub. And I'm pretty sure that Gb hubs don't exist (shudder).

[DHayes]

Just want to point out that hubs are still useful for simplified port mirroring. We run some projects here that it is much easier to use a simple hub for than change around the main switch configuration.

[Nevin Williams]

I've not seen a hub faster than 10/half...