Quote from: willmw on October 16, 2013, 08:04:10 PM
IF this is indeed the problem, the issue isn't bandwidth. In super-oversimplified terms, think of it more like talking vs listening speed. One device is trying to talk/listen at 10 times the rate of the other device. The switch should auto-detect and adjust accordingly, this doesn't always happen as well as one might like.
Most (especially, cheap consumer) switches have a small shared buffer for traffic between ports. If enough traffic (broadcast, multicast, unknown destination) comes in before it can get out, the buffer is filled, and everything is slowed down to the slowest port, because the new data cannot fit, so has to be thrown away. All too many consumer devices and their apps broadcast and multicast "crap" (that is a technical term) all the time, and can add to the overloads. So one "slow" port can impact traffic if your network is filled with certain types of traffic. The real fix is to fix the devices and the apps that are sending out the "crap", or to isolate them on their own network, but often that is easier to say than to do.
Well designed networks with appropriate network isolation (separate voice vlan, for example), and well designed switches (usually the enterprise, managed, variety) which have larger and per queue, or per port, buffers, may not experience the same issues under the same load (you can overwhelm pretty much any switch, but the enterprise ones are designed to move the bar quite a bit higher), but those are not going to be found in most electronics stores.
As an aside, wireless access points can experience some of the same issues. Some types of network traffic, and some types of radio clients, force sending the packets at very slow speeds, and if there is enough of it, everything can slow down.