I recently posted about starting to upgrade my LAN from a wireless G based network to a wired gigabit setup. I got as far as running some cat5e cable between the main points in my network and I was then just waiting to replace the 100Mbit components, namely a couple of Linksys WRT54G wireless routers, with gigabit capable alternatives. Well, I’ve now completed that upgrade.

To replace my main gateway WRT54GS, I bought a Cisco Linksys E3000 dual-band wireless router. This acts as a 4 port gigabit router in addition to a wireless access point and has dual radios so can provide both N and G wireless networks simultaneously. The E3000 is also supported by the excellent DD-WRT custom firmware so I will probably switch to using that at some point, instead of the comparatively limited Linksys firmware.

For the other end of the upstairs/downstairs link I bought a second hand Cisco Linksys SLM2008 8 port gigabit smart switch on eBay for a good price. This is a nice little switch, very sturdy in construction due to its metal case and seems to offer a good range of features.

I haven’t done any formal tests yet but initial impressions are that speeds are much improved, although not the anticipated 10x increase over the 100Mbit upgrade (but, thinking about it now, that was probably naively over optimistic!)