10/100/1000 ethernet, what are the variables?

Surfing the web and downloading won't seem any different. Downloading with my MacBook Pro which has gigabit eithernet isn't any faster than using my Powerbook G3 that has the 10BASE-T. If you were transferring files over a network for from one computer to another over ethernet you WOULD DEFINATELY notice a huge difference.

What is the factor that makes surfing and downloading off the web virtually the same between various computers and connections, and how much of a factor does processor speed play into it?

not so much, really...
You got your computer to home network to home computer speeds... this is where you'll notice that faster nics are faster. Internet to home network to computer... you're never going to notice any difference between 10/100/1000BaseT.

10BaseT maxes out nicely. You'll often see 1MB/s speeds transfering just about anything from one machine to the other, and chances are your cable maxes out at 1MB/s when its really fast. (US speeds, apparently, stink... we're at ~1MB/s, more or less)

But how would that 1MB/s down from the interent provider make your 100BaseT nic (maybe 10MB/s) suck it up any faster? Even though the nic can take 10MB/s, if there's only 1MB/s coming in, that's all you'll see. You take it as fast as they give it.

In a project I'm working on I had my mini transfer over 40GB of data to an experimental server over my home 100Base-T network. The server is significantly faster than the mini (2.4GHz vs 1.5GHz) and it is using a two drive RAID 0 with 80GB ATA100 drives. It was able to get 80% utilization of the 100Base-T network, ie 80Mb/s data speed which is actually somewhat more due to traffic overhead and such. However, over that same network to the internet all of my machines tend to max out at pulling down a 650-700MB ISO image in 20-30 minutes. Much slower. Heck, even my old PB 3400c can get pretty decent down speeds. THe main point here is that the fat 100Base-T network is bottlenecked at the ISP interface - the cable line. Even if my cable router supported gigabit speeds at the LAN port, the WAN/Internet side would still be stuck at the same 6-17Mb/s it gets now.

One nice way to think about it is if you have a private race track. Your track is rated at up to 100MPH, so anyone who is on your track and go up to that fast. But, if they have ot leave the track, they are stuck at the local speed limits of the municipality. So, no matter how fast your track is rated at every sports car that leaves your track must only run at up to the legal limit when outside of it, even if you allow the entrance/exit ramps to run at 100MPH too. As soon as they hit the end of the exit ramp, they are bound by the outer speed limits.

You must have written that late at night after a long day's work, Jon. I've never seen you make so many typos I think I get the point. Thanks for keeping the eyelids up to take the time for the contribution. This is all definitely eye opening. This means, since I hardly every transfer files to or from my PM9600 over my network, then I can pull out the PCI 10/100 card I've got in it and just use the onboard 10base-T for internet use too, freeing up another PCI slot in the 9600. Yay!

So if the ISP cable line is doing 500mhz or 1000mhz, it makes no noticeable difference to the consumer on his comp? The 1 Ghz was one of their selling points for awhile.

Since transfer speeds are universally slow at the WAN/LAN/computer bottleneck, then computer processor speeds are also not significantly important for internet usage? Even at the webpage rendering stage?

i have a 10base T ethernet in my Beige G3 AIO and i have a 15meg cable connection. when i am plugged into the router by ethernet i can't get all of my speed it is capable of. i have a Belkin wireless G+ PCI card in my AIO and that is my main way to connect and it will use all of the connections speed.

the Beige G3 onboard ethernet id 10 base t half duplex which wont allow me to take advantage of the 15meg cable connection i have.

i can download around 2mbps on my wifi card. and when i am on my built in ethernet i can reach a max of 600kbps downloading the same file on the same site if i am uploading it will almost cut that download speed in half. which was on apple.com downloading safari beta 3.

and my uploads suffered as well i can upload around 120kbps on my wifi connection and with the onboard ethernet i cant get but 70kbps but when i am doing this it will severely limit my download speed

Just as an aside, "1000 mhz" is a totally, 100% meaningless number. All it refers to is the width of the spectrum your coaxial cable carries. (Which is divided up between your ISP, your cable TV and music channels, etc, etc.) Relating it to the data speed you actually get is like trying to figure out how many channels your television gets if it's "Capable of 216 Mhz.".

Cable services are notorious for *not* advertising (other then vague big-sounding promises) nor guaranteeing their actual download speeds. Unlike DSL cable download speeds are variable depending on what other people on your neighborhood cable segment are doing. Unless you're the only subscriber on your cable loop *and* your modem is "unlocked" to prevent capping your max download speed (both unlikely) it's exceedingly unlikely you'll even approach 10Mb/s.

In a few years when your neighborhood is rewired for fiber optics you'll want a 100Mb/s router. Unless you live in Japan 1Gbit ISP uplinks are a long way off.

--Peace

What I find interesting here is, a great many, if not a majority, of home computers are probably used mostly for, first and foremost, internet use, and then word processing, music storage and playing, and some occasional viewing of JPEGs, etc. A lot of people probably upgrade to the newer systems thinking their speeds, especially with the internet, are going to increase significantly, but the truth is, for their purposes, their new iMac G5 is not going to benefit them so much more than the Beige AIO they're now tossing in the trash. Gamers, music, graphics and video producers--these are the people getting a great bump up with their new systems. Of course, there's other benefits to upgrading--being able to use newer OS's, better picture quality, etc.--which tie into internet use, but when buying a new comp, one naturally thinks they are increasing speeds also in all departments. This is not actually the case in one of the most important uses. You've spent the bucks on the new system, and for some reason. being online doesn't seem any faster. It must be, you tell yourself. I just spent a ton of money in order for it to be so. There's probably a general self-denial amongst a lot of new system purchasers. What their senses are telling them is right, but it couldn't be right--they just spent $1800, so of course, it can't be right.

When the Pentium III came out Intel ran a series of ads implying that having their newest, fastest chip would somehow maximize your "internet experience". Of course, at the time most people were lucky if they had a 56k modem, so my jaded comment then was that the Pentium III must be so powerful that it can just make up things to amuse you so it doesn't have to bother downloading anything. ;^b

--Peace

Heh. I do think that a faster machine is able to process the pages it gets faster, to a point. So, browsing on, say a 233MHz iMac is going to be noticeably slower than browsing on a G4 of nearly any speed, even if they use the same net connection. I can certainly notice how slow browsing is on my old 300MHz P2 laptop vs my P4. Even my mini vs the P4 is noticable, but that depends on how much flash or java there is or how "media rich" the page is.

flash or java dont slow down the windows machine as bad as it does the PPC OS X machine.

i have a compaq 500mhz celeron 128mb ram with windows xp pro. when i go to a page with tones of flash and or java i dont see a diffrence in performance of the web browser everything flows as smooth as silk.

now on my Beige G3 AIO with a G3 466mhz cpu 768mb ram ATI Radeon 7000 and a 120gb HDD running 10.4.10 any amount of java or flash makes the browser nearly un scrollable and what ever flash or java is playing is also real slow.

in VPC running windows 98se or windows XP Pro even tho the emulated system is real slow, flash and java dont slow the browser down as much as a browser in native OS X does. if you ask me flash and java for Mac is very poorly ported or coded and unoptimized.

but having a faster CPU in any system will make the net seem faster cause the pages are being loaded much faster. even tho its using the same speed of connection..

like i said in my above post that my 15meg connection when hooked to the AIO threw its ethernet port wont use all of the connection speed cause its half duplex meaning it can either transmit or receive one way at a time and its a 10 base T dont help much either.

the speed of your downloads is determined by how good of equipment you have to take advantage or not of a fast connection. say like if you have a 45meg connection and have a computer with a 10 base t ethernet port you wont be able to take advantage of the connections full potential. now if you have a 10/100 Base T half or full duplex ethernet port you could get a higher speed of a download. the same goes with a 10/100/1000 ethernet port with a even faster connection.

i a way you can say you internet speed (pages loading and downloads) is as fast as your slowest piece of equipment (netowrking and CPU wise).

i have a P475 with 128mb ram and a full 040 40mhz CPU (running at the stock 25mhz speed) with a 1.2 gb HDD and 1mb vram running 7.6.1 it will surf the net but the pages load real slow but the downloads are the same speed as my Beige G3 AIO.