2 8port 10mbit hubs for small LAN?

[The_Lurker]

Hey, i'm thinking of hosting a small LAN in the next short little while and was wondering whether 2 8port 10mbit hub hooked up to a 4port 10/100mbit hub where the server will be located work alright? I'm planning on 7 computers on each 10mbit hub, (the last port on each would be the uplink hooking it up to the 10/100 hub), where then the last 2 ports on the 10/100 will be one server and one gaming machine. ANy ideas on how wel it'd work out? Will the pings stay below 50? or would i need a switch to achieve that? LMK what you think!

 

[jmcoreymv]

You can get one of those SMC 16 port 10/100 switches for like ~150 I believe (may be wrong). If were you id go for that.

 

[The_Lurker]

Hey, THx for the fast reply, but since i'm on a tight budget and this is just small LAN among friends, i'm not looking to spend really any money at all (since we have the HUBs already) so just an indication on how this would perform would be great!

 

[blstriker]

It really depends what situation you're talking about. If you're having 15 people playing UT at the same time, you'll probably saturate your hubs and get massive collisions. If you're playing starcraft, you should have no problems at all. What are you going to use the LAN for?

 

[The_Lurker]

O, yeah, we're looking to play mainly FPS's like Q3, UT, Tribes, Rogue Spear, Counterstrike, etc.

 

[cavingjan]

Try it and see how it is. We normally borrow a switch from work to replace the hubs installed in our houses when we gather at one another's houses for LAN games but then again we have access to the switches so its not an issue. You might also be better trying to run a couple small games rather than one large game across that network.
Another thing you might want to try is only use the two hubs and not the third. We usually play with 9 people and a couple games of Diablo1 (some of the worse lan code ever IMO) and some UT and a game of MW3. This wasn't even too bad with the old 10bT hubs.
You don't really have anything to lose. If you run into a problem the day it happens, justbreak the LAN in two and have two sets of games going.

 

[The_Lurker]

Thx for the advice, btw, if i connect the hubs, do they act as one? oh when connecting the hubs together? would the hubs join together as one? or is it like the communication between the 8 port hubs connect to the 4 port hub that they become one? or is it the 8 ports communicate only via 1 connection so that there is less chance of clashing?

 

[CTR]

Hub=shared medium

So the more hubs you link together, the more PC's are sharing the bandwidth. Since you have 7 people on each hub, and the hubs are linked via another hub, then all 14 people are sharing 10Mbps of bandiwdth. Now since you have a couple of hosts on the 10/100 hub, things get a little tricky. You should set the PC AND the Server on this hub to 10Mbps, so you have a uniform shared medium.

It might seem like a good idea to set the Server to 100Mbps, but this is a hub -- not a switch. The server will be sharing the bandwidth just like everyone else. If the Server is communicating at 100Mbps and all of the hosts are communicating at 10Mbps, then there exists the potential to overrun the buffer of the 10/100Mbit hub as it tries to deliver 100Mbps of data across a 10Mbps link. In the real world, the server would never be able to utilize more than ~85% of the bandwidth, and the LAN traffic would probably be bursty enough to never fill the buffer on the 10/100 hub. But from a design standpoint you can see where the 10x differential in bandwidth between the server and the host could present a problem. I say set 'em all to 10Mbps and let it run.

 

[The_Lurker]

O..... so it would be better if everybody was communicating at the same speeds? Also, would there be any collision problems with so many people on the hubs? WOuld the pings go over 50? O, and is there any really economical solutino that would be better than using the 8 port hubs? WOuld switches be necessary with so few people?

 

[CTR]

It will run great if you are ONLY gaming with this network -- no internet access, not FTP transfers, no Windows networking, no MP3 sharing, etc. When you start throwing in more kinds of traffic, you will start to see degraded performance. But keep it strictly for games, and you will see very low pings and not enough collisions to worry about.

 

[PELarson]

<< O..... so it would be better if everybody was communicating at the same speeds? Also, would there be any collision problems with so many people on the hubs? WOuld the pings go over 50? O, and is there any really economical solutino that would be better than using the 8 port hubs? WOuld switches be necessary with so few people? >>



A switch would provide better preformance. Check out e*ay, for switches and pricewatch also.

 

[Garion]

People, people.. We're taking about computer games here. Keep in mind that most of these are designed to be run across the Internet. A couple of 10Mb/s hubs are going to be FINE. If you have 8 people running games that are optimized for 128Kb/s use with fairly high latency (and run fairly happily at 56Kb/s) 10,000Kb/s is going to be FINE (Even if your actual throughput capacity on a 10Mb/s lan is only about 5Mb/s or 5,000Kb/s - Still more than adequate). Same thing with MP3's - Most are encoded at 128Kb/s - You'd need to be playing 40 at the same time to have any problems on a 10BaseT network.

There's a lot of businesses and homes that run 30+ computers on one 10BaseT segment without ANY problems. Ya, they might get some collisions occasionally, but that's how Ethernet works.

FTP is also fine on this kinda thing - If you have a 256K DSL, you're only using 1/20th of a 10BaseT network.

Everyone has decided that switches are the ONLY way to go nowadays. In many cases, that's true, especially given the bandwidth-hungry apps that most businesses (and some home users) are taking advantage of. But, for 90% of the applications out there, a 10Mb/s hub is fine for under 20 users.

I think that Cavingjan has exactly the right idea. Go with the hubs and in the extremely unlikely case you have network problems, chunk 'em in half and play two games.

- G

 

[Woodie]

I'm not convinced about the bandwidth. I have some friends that had a split-network with 16 MB token-ring and 10baseT, and the guys on the enet side were at a small, but noticeable disadvantage.

Not sure if it was due to the higher speed on the t/r side, or the better performance under load.

--Woodie

 

[spidey07]

woodie,

Token ring is considerably faster (3x-4x) than ethernet and handles saturation much better.

To lurker,
slap them hubs together and start gaming! your pings should be fine, just don't go sharing massive files between the computers.

 

[Woodie]

What makes you say t/r is 3x to 4x faster? I understand the saturation part, but why the extra speed when there's no load?

(BTW, I run t/r exclusively on my home lan, so I'm convinced!)

--Woodie

 

[spidey07]

larger frame sizes (thats the killer), no collision backoff, automatic error recovery. Remember that FDDI still kills fast ethernet in terms of performance.

token ring can easily run at 85% utilization seemlessly, ethernet has trouble getting above 40%.

.4*10 = 4 Mbs
.85*16 = 13.6 Mbs

13.6/4 = 3.4 or 3x-4x faster.

 

[The_Lurker]

<<
To lurker,
slap them hubs together and start gaming! your pings should be fine, just don't go sharing massive files between the computers. >>



Alright! Thx for the assurances and advice! I love this forum, people are so helpful!

 

[fargus]

It'll also help if you make sure everybody isn't running any unneeded protocols.... if somebody is running IP, IPX, NebBEUI, etc, they generate a lot more network overhead than needed... so pare everything down to either IP or IPX, whatever you're running the games on. On the last network I managed, we increased network performance 20% doing this, and that was only about 20 machines.

 

[The_Lurker]

<< It'll also help if you make sure everybody isn't running any unneeded protocols.... if somebody is running IP, IPX, NebBEUI, etc, they generate a lot more network overhead than needed... so pare everything down to either IP or IPX, whatever you're running the games on. On the last network I managed, we increased network performance 20% doing this, and that was only about 20 machines. >>



ooh, thx for the advice, i'll keep that in mind, also, if i dont run a dhcp server, i'll just make all them assign IP's? What IP's would i assign? or what gateway would i assign? What about subnet mask? Or do i just assign them a 192.168.0.x IP and that would be alright?Then have one computer host and have them JOIn taht IP?

 

[Woodie]

If you're not going to run a DHCP server....you're about to find out why people use it

IP address: 192.168.0.10x (one per client--tape the IP address to the spot on the table where the PC will sit)
Netmask: 255.255.255.0 (for all clients)
Def Gateway: 192.168.0.1 (for all clients. There isn't a machine on your subnet with this address, that's ok)
DNS: ?? i don't think you need this, since it will be just games. Can anyone confirm this?

--Woodie