Switch/Router Port Speed? full 1gbps duplex?

[rmarcaidaphi]

Hi Guys,

Not sure if my question was already answered and if I did enough to search all discussions here about this. Anyway, my question is about the port speed of a switch/router interface. More specifically on a switch. If a switch port operates on full duplex with an interface of 1Gbps, does it mean it can handle a 1Gbps download and 1Gbps upload at the same time? Thanks in advance,

[Mark Elsen]

 - Strange question, because both elements of your question can be seen as the same.

M.

[Leo Laohoo · Accepted solution]

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@rmarcaidaphi wrote:

If a switch port operates on full duplex with an interface of 1Gbps, does it mean it can handle a 1Gbps download and 1Gbps upload at the same time?

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Yes.

[Eric101]

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is maybe....
Different hardware platforms may be oversubscribed, for example 4 ports share a single 1G Full Duplex channel to the back-plane of the switch, where if all ports where to operate at full speed, each port would in effect have only 250Mbps of bandwidth. This is particularly seen in cases where lower-end platforms (user voice/data switches) have been plugged into high intensity loads (servers)
It's always good to check the datasheets to confirm. I have seen so many people with large chassis based switches have performance issues because they failed to select the correct line cards for the workloads.