Networking question (gigabit switch and network speed?)

[shponglefan]

I have a wired home network.  In includes a Gigabit Netgear router w/ 4 LAN ports, plus a gigabit switch for extra ports.  The Router had connections to my existing NAS, the switch, and then two cables to different locations in my house.

I recently added a second NAS to my setup; I only had a free port on the switch, so I just plugged it in there.  Speed, however, seemed a bit slow as I was barely getting 10 MB/s in transfer speed.  I tried plugging the new NAS directly into the router, and I can now hit speeds of roughly 100 MB/s.

So clearly something was bottlenecking with the switch.  I checked the cables and I'm using either Cat 5e or Cat 6 across the board.

Is it normal to have a speed bottleneck when going through a switch?  Or possibly some of my so-called Cat5e cables might not be performing as Cat 5e?

edited to add:  Solved it.  I noticed my switch had LED indicators for speed (10/100 vs gigabit) and was indicating only 10/100 for the connection to the router.  Swapped the cable for a different Cat 5e one and it now indicates gigabit speed.  I guess that other cable isn't a real Cat 5e after all...

[Mike A]

Just had the same problem at work. Our company controller had numerous problems posting batches in her accounting software. I looked at her network settings and sure enough it read 100 megabits.  I asked her what she changed in the last couple of days. After several attempts to cover her butt she finally admitted that she brought a longer cable from home so she could move her computer. The cable was garbage. Problem solved.