Cisco SG300-10 LACP setup?

[florenm1970]

I need some advice about the SG300-10 switch. My goal is to use it to connect 3 computers and a home made NAS (FreeNAS), using LACP. Each computer runs CentOS. My current setup is:

Modem

---- Netgear ProSafe SRXN3205

-------- Computer1

-------- Computer2

-------- Computer3

-------- NAS

All wiring is done with 5ft CAT6 cables, connected to 1Gbit network cards. I can transfer data from NAS to Computer1 at about 110MB/sec but I'm capped at the 1Gbit limit because the cards. So I purchased for each computer an extra Intel 1Gbit card, to enable LACP. I tried to use a Netgear ProSafe GS108Tv2 switch but the performance was terrible. I was transfering data at 30 MB/sec, compared to 110MB/sec I was getting through a direct router connection. The Netgear switch did not allowed me also to use a dual LACP connection from the router, I was getting DHCPDISCOVER failures on the NAS and no Internet connection on computers. So I removed the dual connection from router to switch and that resolved the issues. This is when I got 30MB/sec transfers, from NAS.

This is the planned setup (-- single wire connection, = dual LACP connection):

Modem

---- Netgear ProSafe SRXN3205

==== Cisco SG300-10

======== Computer1 (CentOS 5 bonding mode 4)

======== Computer2 (CentOS 5 bonding mode 4)

======== Computer3 (CentOS 6 bonding mode 4)

======== NAS (FreeNAS LACP)

My main concern is the transfer speed. Did anyone experienced issues with this switch, using a similar setup? The dual connection between router and switch is not necessary, but I want to take advantage of the LACP in order to transfer data at approx 200MB/sec. I'm a little upset that I spent the money on a switch that is useless to me now (cannot return it after 30 days), so I want to make sure the new switch will not give me any performance issues.

Thank you for your input.

[Boudewijn Plomp]

Keep in mind that Link Aggregation (with LACP) with two network interfaces does not offer a 2GB connection. Instead it deliveres a 2x1GB connection. Network traffic is balanced omong the network interfaces, based on source/destination MAC Address and/or IP Address. Depending on how you have configured it.

For example; At home I have two SG300-20 switches. They both use LInk Aggregation with two network interfaces. I can transfer around 110MB/s. And at the office we have one SG300-28 en six SG300-10 switches. These six switches are connected to the SG300-28 with Link Aggregation with two network interfaces each. Again we can transfer around 110MB/s. But you can have that performance from two devices at at a time, each using it's own switch interface.

So the bottom line is. Link Aggregation offers more performance if you use more than one computers at a time.