10BaseT should be plenty for medium sized home newtwork, right?

[Jeff]

Just curious, but should 10baseT be adequate for 5 or 6 PC's, or is 100baseT a good idea? I don't plan on using anything that would be very straining on it (like constantly moving many large files around), but just some application sharing and playing games, and later on a shared cable connection. Thanks in advance.

[blondini]

sure 10baseT will do! it comes down to price really 10\100baseT as you say would only really benefit large transfers etc.-- gaming, file sharing, mild stuff on 10baseT PCI full duplex with a good hub will do fine.

[kgb]

Yeah 10Tbase will do. But considering you are planning to use that network mainly for gaming...maybe 100T will be worth specially if you had more than 2 computers. I got a LAN at home on 10tbase.....and i beginning to regret not going for 100tbase. And i barely use it for games but mainly docmument and application installation. Any way...just to inform you....

[ktwebb]

bah, 10baseT for a 6 pc lan is plenty.

[Fallen Kell]

10baseT should be fine, unless you can find:
1. Fairly cheap 10/100 NIC's
2. A Cheap 10/100 hub/switch (switch will be expensive)

It really comes down to a price issue with such a small network. If you have that money for the 100 go for it, if not don't worry about it. Anyway most cable modems only have a 10Mbps connection anyway, so the entire network will be sharing that connection out to the world. Some of the new cablemodems are starting to support a 30Mbps connection, and if this is the case you would need a 10/100 NIC to take advantage of it.

[LiquidIQ]

10baseT has been the standard in networking large offices (20-500 computers)and small offices and homes for nearly 2 decades why it wouldn't be adequate now stumps me unless you like to run video games off a file-server. The only reason you'd need a fast-ethernet network at your house is if you have disk-less terminals and need to run the os over the network or you like running things like quake and half-life off of a server, even then on most networks, unless it's EXTREMELY bogged down... ie 2-4 people all running the same game off the server... Otherwise, a 4Mbps connection for your computer at home to connect to others is pretty good. Considering most HD's transfer at about 5Mbps, not the blistering 16Mbps peaks that you see on the specs on the box of an HD, even scsi drives transfer about 6-7, albeit a bit more fluidly due to differences in how info is transfered.