We're getting a new NAS at work, and might want to reconfigure our network to take advantage of its two gigE ports.

The candidate NAS is QNAP TS-451, a SOHO-grade part that benchmarked best among competitors in this review.

We have an 8-port gigE switch with ports maxed-out (and a couple of smaller switches daisy-chained to it), so we would need to get another to use the NAS in "dual-lan mode" (hook up ports to separate switches) -- theoretically increasing networking performance.

This is what I'm wondering: would a single, 24-port switch give better networking in general among devices (NAS, several pc's, printers etc), or would two switches connected in dual-lan mode give better NAS speeds, because that's the main priority? Would there be any performance gains in hooking both NAS ports to the same switch?

 (dance)

Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

I tried to reinstall ME, and now it won't boot  :-((

It probably committed suicide.

Surely splitting your network that way means computers on either side wanting to communicate need to push their data through the NAS?

Is that not very inefficient? Slow?

I'm no expert but surely a bigger switch that covers all computers is better.

And what Kos said in the other thread, your hard drives are going to be a limiting factor over the Gigabit network.

Not much communication among pcs, compared to pc - NAS.

Mrs.D's first pc came with ME on board, soon replaced by JimT4.

I would always, always choose 1 switch over multiple switches.  It's much easier to manage and is a single point of failure instead of multiple places where something can happen.

Thanks. I also learned today you need a managed switch for link aggregation / port trunking.

Yup you do.

I'm not sure "dual-lan" means what you think it does. Are you talking about putting each of the NICs on the NAS into a separate subnet? Do you have more than one subnet in your LAN? Also, are your switches managed, or just plug and play type switches?

Basically, if everything is on the same subnet, then you'll either only be able to use one of the NAS NICs, or you'll need a managed switch that supports etherchannel/NIC teaming (configuring both NICs to work together as a single, 2-Gig port rather than 2 x 1Gig ports). You won't be able to get that to work over two separate switches.

Putting everything into one big switch is always going to be quicker than daisy-chained switches. That way everything goes over the switch's back-plane rather than wandering around on ethernet links between the switches.

Edit: Cisco do some good layer 3 managed switches for small businesses. Buggered if I can remember their model numbers, though.

Edit edit: what Ken said.

Thanks. Looks like this will do the job for not too much $$$.

Can that do etherchannels and/or trunks, then? Your link mentions VLANs, but not much else.

Yeah, according to the manual:

Fair enough. That should work nicely.

Netgear are not back for switches and are a lot cheaper and easier to configure than Cisco kit.

Something like this will work great on a small network and can easily be extended to another switch using the two fiber channels ports. You can also setup trucking easily using the web interface  using LACP.

http://www.uk.insight.com/en-gb/productinfo/network-switches/0002656863

I do like Cisco kit but its a pain for a quick job that doesn need anything complicated.

Cisco's out of my price range. The one I linked to is a 16-port dlink (appropriately enuf). I'd rather get a 24-port though. Unfortunately the one you linked to (or something like) is also out of my price range http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122600. It seems you pay by the port for these things.

Oh the exchange rate is not on your side. That's $186 of goodness though!

Yeah. :-/