Jumbo Frames and Gigabit

[Kyuusei]

I'm in search of some concrete answers to a couple of questions I've been going through about my home network the past few days. Currently I have my desktop and a gigabit NAS wired to a WRT610Nv1 and a HTPC + PS3 hooked up to an old WGT624 I'm using as a switch in the living room. Got a couple of other PCs wireless connected. I'm trying to update the whole shebang to Gigabit and preferably Jumbo Frame support as well as adding in an expansion.

Currently going through the WRT610N gets me transfers speeds of ~200 Mbps while is comparable to what SmallNetBuilder.com got when they reviewed it, its far from Gigabit speeds. The WRT610N doesn't officially support Jumbo Frames (DD-WRT does but not entirely stable) either. Newegg has a buy 2 get 1 free deal on Netgear GS-105E Gigabit/Jumbo Frame switches which according to SmallNetBuilder.com, should be good for ~700 Mbps. So is it possible to get Jumbo Frame support by bypassing it with a switch? If it is, I'm thinking I can kill 2 birds with one stone, by bypassing the slow router with a fast switch and gain Jumbo Frames to boot.

I can't run through the walls so while a centralized switch would be great, I don't want to have cables strewn all over the floor. So one of the switches are gonna be right next to the Modem/Router, while the other two are gonna be in other parts of the house.

Oh and question regarding QoS. My internet connection is pretty crappy (3MBps down/0.8MBps up on a good day) and my HTPC is often used to stream video off the internet while I'm trying to get a quick game of CS:S, CoD, whatever. When both are going at the same time, the HTPC streams just fine while I'm getting horrendous pings and lag spikes. Can QoS be used to limit my HTPC to say 1/3rd of my internet connection rather than just limiting it's LAN bandwidth? More specifically is possible with my network scheme from above using the QoS implementation in the Netgear GS-105E?

[rogard]

You limiting factor here will be your NICs. Jumbo is simply a frame larger than 1.5k some nics have a 4K setting some 7K some 9K.

Before investing in jumbo switches ensure you can go jumpb all the way

[Kyuusei]

The all of the devices on my network support Jumbo Frames save for a PS3 and a streaming TV box.

[ben0]

QoS won't really make a difference to improve your FPS gaming. Your QoS Setting will only affect data going upstream which may not be too heavily affected by your htpc streaming. Your ISP will manage prioritising data that is sent to you (your downstream).

[deachus]

I have my Gigabit home network setup as follows and I transfer between my Server and wired PC's at 125MB/s where i was only transfering at about 10MB/s with my old Fast Ethernet Network. I have Intel Gigabit CT Desktop Adapters in my PC's, a Linksys 8 Port Gigabit Workgroup switch in my basement and a DLink 5 Port Gigabit switch in my office. I rip and encode my DVD collection on my main workstation and then transfer to my server which is extremely quick. I upgrade about 2 years ago because I couldn't stand waiting to transfer movies. I don't use QOS so can't help on that. I did see more consistent transfer speeds and higher transfer speeds when I upgraded to Intel NICS versus using the onboard gigabit nics.