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160 person LAN -- is this enough? or will it lag?
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wait a second, somebody do the math on 160 people hitting a server with QUAD's design. I remember tracin game traffic just to see what it does-small frames relatively low bandwidth (128-384k gives very respectable frame rates and pings. hmmmmm, 3 streams per meg, 300 streams per 100 meg). You should be able to calculate the demand per user/per port/per trunk if you know what the game demands in terms of bandwidth.
If you are looking for the absolutely lowest cost solution (and still maintain DECENT performance) then you are on the right track, the most important thing in your design would then be the switch and switch only (100 hub is pretty dumb anyway, stay away from the home gear such as netgear and linksys). Don't skimp here on the switch as buffer and backplane bandwidth come into play with trying to force that many realtime conversations down a single port. get a extremem or cisco3548 (man i'm still leaning toward a cisco4000 on this. the traffic patterns you are desribing are why switches were invented in the first place and are the perfect application, let the switch buffer ingress/egress and not have to worry about collisions and loss)
Jeez, do they even make hubs anymore? year is 2001 ya know.
<edit, hate to be a sourpuss BUT, you have had very good advice from some very knowledgible people who have worked in this industry a long time. You have been warned and have no further right to complain if the network sucks. you really do get what you pay for.>
If you are looking for the absolutely lowest cost solution (and still maintain DECENT performance) then you are on the right track, the most important thing in your design would then be the switch and switch only (100 hub is pretty dumb anyway, stay away from the home gear such as netgear and linksys). Don't skimp here on the switch as buffer and backplane bandwidth come into play with trying to force that many realtime conversations down a single port. get a extremem or cisco3548 (man i'm still leaning toward a cisco4000 on this. the traffic patterns you are desribing are why switches were invented in the first place and are the perfect application, let the switch buffer ingress/egress and not have to worry about collisions and loss)
Jeez, do they even make hubs anymore? year is 2001 ya know.
<edit, hate to be a sourpuss BUT, you have had very good advice from some very knowledgible people who have worked in this industry a long time. You have been warned and have no further right to complain if the network sucks. you really do get what you pay for.>
At work we would use some horrendously expensive chasis based swith for this.
However, this sounded like it was for dorm use so I started wondering how cheap something like this could be put together.
Wow did not know you could put together something this size so cheap these days. If you are really on a shoestring:
Addtron 24-Port Stackable Rackmountable 10Mbps Hub $127.00 x 7
Addtron 8-Port 10/100 Switch + 1Gigabit Fiber Port $367.00
NetGear GA620 Gigabit Ethernet Fiber PCI Adapter $299.99
Total is $1623.
Solution meets ethernet standards and cascades nicely, from 10 to 100 to 1000. Should do fine for streaming MP3s, Playing Quake, and sharing those term papers.
Assumption is made that you have a server that can handle and needs a gig. If not, you can get a cheaper switch (or a little more an expensive managed one) and get rid of the gig adapter.
Course it's all no-name POS unmanaged stuff. probably perform horendously, corrupt your files, give you F's on all your termpapers, and burn down your dorm or whatever.
Still 168 users for under 2 grand! We pay two to three times that for a single 48 port blade. Anyone here have experience in such low end on a shoe string networking care to comment?
hah
<< <edit, hate to be a sourpuss BUT, you have had very good advice from some very knowledgible people who have worked in this industry a long time. You have been warned and have no further right to complain if the network sucks. you really do get what you pay for.> >>
this whole network is completely theoretical, as stated at the top. yes, i know it's 2001, and hubs are pretty crappy. i'm not complaining about anything. but they are still cost effective solutions for small networks.
<< <edit, hate to be a sourpuss BUT, you have had very good advice from some very knowledgible people who have worked in this industry a long time. You have been warned and have no further right to complain if the network sucks. you really do get what you pay for.> >>
this whole network is completely theoretical, as stated at the top. yes, i know it's 2001, and hubs are pretty crappy. i'm not complaining about anything. but they are still cost effective solutions for small networks.
Garion
Platinum Member
I agree that switches would be the best option for this network, just for bandwidth's sake. It doesn't have to be as much as you might expect. I'd recommend picking up seven 24-port switches (Zeus Micro $195@Accessmicro.com) and a Linksys gigabit starter kit (8 10/100 ports, 1 gigabit port and a gigabit NIC) for about $220. Totals to about $1600, or $10/port for a fully-switched 100Mb/s network with a gigabit server port and NIC. Quite a steal! If you wanted to spend a BIT more cash you could pick up a more name-brand 24-port switch (IE, SMC) for about $250 each.
If you REALLY need to be cheap, you could pick up some used 24-port 10BaseT hubs for about $80 each plus an 16-port 10/100 switch for about $150. That'd get you into it for under $750, but your performance would be about 1/4th the other solution.
All that being said.. Most gaming is optimized to run across the Internet. 128K seems to be a good spot for adequate bandwidth for most games. Even 24 people sharing a 10Mb/s hub is only about 3Mb/s (Of course, with a half duplex hub, your max bandwidth is about 5Mb/s). You'd probably survive for this (and likely) next generation games. From there, however... Who knows. To do it right, ante up the $1600 and get the switches!
Most poor gaming performance is caused by latency within the network - Delays, bottlenecks, etc. On a LAN (even 10Mb/s), this should be pretty unusual. You'd probably play pretty much anything fine. Just don't do any major transfers to/from the server at the same time!
Lastly.. Don't forget to factor in the cost of cables! They add up rapidly. You can find 7' cables for about $2 and 15' for $3 if you look carefully, however. If you need 160 15' cables, however, you're adding another $500 to the price!
- G
If you REALLY need to be cheap, you could pick up some used 24-port 10BaseT hubs for about $80 each plus an 16-port 10/100 switch for about $150. That'd get you into it for under $750, but your performance would be about 1/4th the other solution.
All that being said.. Most gaming is optimized to run across the Internet. 128K seems to be a good spot for adequate bandwidth for most games. Even 24 people sharing a 10Mb/s hub is only about 3Mb/s (Of course, with a half duplex hub, your max bandwidth is about 5Mb/s). You'd probably survive for this (and likely) next generation games. From there, however... Who knows. To do it right, ante up the $1600 and get the switches!
Most poor gaming performance is caused by latency within the network - Delays, bottlenecks, etc. On a LAN (even 10Mb/s), this should be pretty unusual. You'd probably play pretty much anything fine. Just don't do any major transfers to/from the server at the same time!
Lastly.. Don't forget to factor in the cost of cables! They add up rapidly. You can find 7' cables for about $2 and 15' for $3 if you look carefully, however. If you need 160 15' cables, however, you're adding another $500 to the price!
- G
<< this whole network is completely theoretical, as stated at the top. yes, i know it's 2001, and hubs are pretty crappy. i'm not complaining about anything. but they are still cost effective solutions for small networks. >>
PentiumII 200s are still a cost effective solution for small networks as well. but you don't use them. Nowadays computer are pretty much useless if not attached to a network. That being said, the network is really the most important part of any kind of computing (also the cheapest considering the price of hosts and pcs).
I say the best solution would be to get a mondo spool of coax cable, purchase 10base2 nics from some auction, terminate all of them and you've got an even cheaper solution!
all my ranting aside, 100 megabits hubs linked to some kind of 10/100/1000 switch will be adequate for gaming, just watch that you're not doing anything else like Garion said.
<edit> replace some names
Yes, having a Gb pipe to the server would help. Think of it as a "backbone" similar to the way the internet is built. We are all connecting through either some form of broadband or dialup.
What would the internet be like if all that was piped through at the same speed at which we are connecting? VERY slow.
Russ, NCNE
What would the internet be like if all that was piped through at the same speed at which we are connecting? VERY slow.
Russ, NCNE
With all those users accessing files or the internet through the server, than you've got a huge bottleneck on the connection going through to the server, so you'd want as big a pipe as possible.
That was the whole discussion about 16 times over the 100mbps limit of the original connection. If you hook the gigabit line to the server, you reduce the overload going through the pipeline to 1.6 over -- big difference. Of course this only comes into play when all of the network's resources are being stretched to the limit.
That was the whole discussion about 16 times over the 100mbps limit of the original connection. If you hook the gigabit line to the server, you reduce the overload going through the pipeline to 1.6 over -- big difference. Of course this only comes into play when all of the network's resources are being stretched to the limit.
You are right, it has been awhile since that topic has been brought up, "how do you connect 2 pc's to share an internet connection?" heheh
With that aside, I'd recommend that you give leeway to your network design and take into account capacity planning. What if the amount of users grow from 160? I'm sure you guys won't be playing the same game forever, newer games are going to have increased demand on the resources. Have the 160 chip a tad bit more money so that you can have a more reliable and scalable performance in your environment. g'luck!
With that aside, I'd recommend that you give leeway to your network design and take into account capacity planning. What if the amount of users grow from 160? I'm sure you guys won't be playing the same game forever, newer games are going to have increased demand on the resources. Have the 160 chip a tad bit more money so that you can have a more reliable and scalable performance in your environment. g'luck!
Garion
Platinum Member
With a switch, all of the ports running at 100Mb/s (Eight, if you use the Linksys one I recommended), will have full access to the server on Gigabit - All 8 ports total to 100Mb/s which can't fill up the 1000Mb/s of the gigabit port.
Of course, this 1000BaseT thing might be overkill.. You have to have a pretty dammed beefy server for gigabit. The rate that the frames come in across the network causes so many interrupts that it will very rapidly overload the CPU. Also, unless you're using a very fast RAID you're not going to get much performance. For example, using an on-board RAID0 (as is commonly-included in many mobos today) with a couple of ATA100/7200 RPM drives will max out at about 30MB/s or 240Mb/s.
Your maximum throughput on a gigabit link will likely be about 250Mb/s and might not be worth the extra cost over a single 100Mb/s full duplex link. Of course, for the prices on the Linksys starter kit, you're only spending an extra $70 for the NIC and the switch port, so it might be worth a shot.
- G
Of course, this 1000BaseT thing might be overkill.. You have to have a pretty dammed beefy server for gigabit. The rate that the frames come in across the network causes so many interrupts that it will very rapidly overload the CPU. Also, unless you're using a very fast RAID you're not going to get much performance. For example, using an on-board RAID0 (as is commonly-included in many mobos today) with a couple of ATA100/7200 RPM drives will max out at about 30MB/s or 240Mb/s.
Your maximum throughput on a gigabit link will likely be about 250Mb/s and might not be worth the extra cost over a single 100Mb/s full duplex link. Of course, for the prices on the Linksys starter kit, you're only spending an extra $70 for the NIC and the switch port, so it might be worth a shot.
- G
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