2 X 24 vs 1 X 48 : Gigabit Switch ?

[Jack88Jack]

Hello every body
I need your help to choose between two methods to apply a Gigabit Connection between 36 PCs holding heavy gaming tournaments and battles via LAN;
1. Connecting each 18 to a 24 GBE switch and then joining the two switches using a CAT 6 cross cable.
2. Connecting the whole group to a 48 GBE switch.

I mean, would there be a hard-to-carry pressure on the cross cable in case 1 ?
Is it possible for a single switch to keep a very fast responding LAN if 36 PCs are playing simultaneously ?

Games to be played : COD MW3 . Unreal Tournament . CSGO . Blur and some others.
..
I'm looking for a medium budget GB Switch though, like a D-Link or a medium Unmanaged Linksys Switch.

 

[bill001g]

You do not use cross cable anymore.

It really depends on the amount of traffic. For example say you had a bunch of nas devices an you put them all on switch 1 and you put all your users on switch 2. Assuming that different users access different NAS at the same time you could use more than 1g of traffic. Now if they were all accessing the same nas it would not matter since you only have 1g going to that nas.

The reason you buy multiple switches is to allow for a possible partial failure and still run scenario and because it is many times(but not always) cheaper to buy 2 small switches. Or you have some need to spread the ports over a large area and have cable length issues.

The reason you buy a single switch is exactly the reason you state. All 36pc can send and receive 1g of data all all at the same time. In theory you could have 72gbit of traffic flowing though the switch. Not sure of a realistic example where it can happen but most switches have the capacity.

This is also the reason they sell chassis switches where you can put in multiple 48 port cards and have the whole chassis run all port with no delays. Stacked switches are a variation of this.

You need to read the spec on the switch but it is very common for the switch to say non-blocking,wire speed etc. They many times will give you the backplane speeds and all you do is check it is 2xnumber of ports in gbits.

Now if you buy 10g switches you will still find large switches that can not actually run all ports at 10g up and 10g down at the same instance. I suspect as time goes by and the asic chips get faster you will see even all 10g switches that can run all ports.

 

[Jack88Jack]

Thank you bill for the well explained answer, so taking in consideration that this LAN is implemented for gaming and only gaming, I'm even not connecting any NASs, you recommend buying a single 48 port Switch, Since PCs are physically close enough i.e I'm not gonna run into any cable installing and length issues ?
And about the needed bandwidth and amount of traffic you mentioned in the beginning, I really don't know a scientific method to calculate the traffic coming from a number of PCs playing LAN games, hosts and clients. idk !
moreover, if I wanted to split the thing into two 24 switches, what would be the best way to do it ?

 

[bill001g]

This is the reason I used the NAS as a example pretty much everyone knows how they work. You would have to really know in depth now game systems work which I don't.

Pretty much look for a 48 port switch, if you can find one that you feel is ok price wise just go that route and you will have no issues. If money is a problem then you will need to figure out the traffic stuff and any issue you would have about which PC goes on which switch and how much traffic they use.