Some netowrking questions!

[gogeeta13]

I am getting either cable or dsl very soon(ordered both, we will see which comes first...). I currently have 4 windows machines in my house(one will be a rc5 pproxy). In addition to those, I will have a machine designated as a router(may use nt4 or freesco) and then 2-3 klinux nodes. I want to run my windows machines at 100MB, and my klinux nodes at 10(it is cheaper and easier for me to use 10mb cards that i already have on hand. What can I do?

 

[Buddha Bart]

If you use hubs you'll want two seperate ones. One for the 100's, one for the 10's. Otherwise they either wont talk to each other, or will all revert to 10 (depending on the hub).

A good idea would be a 5-port 10/100 switch, and a 5-port 10bT hub. The uplink port of the hub plugged into one of the nodes on the switch, and all your 10bT equipment on that. Leaving the other 4 nodes on the switch for your windoes machiens with 100bTX cards.

Or of course you could drop the money on a larger (12, 16, etc) port switch. But those start to get expensive. You can get a 10/100 5port swtich for $50 and a 10bT 5port hub for $15 or $20.

bart

 

[gogeeta13]

will nt work as a good router?

 

[Tallgeese]

<< will nt work as a good router? >>

Actually, NT4 sucks as a router, IMHO.

NT4 barely qualifies as a router, unless you install M$' standalone Routing and RAS Admin Update (also known as &quot;Steelhead&quot; [somebody, maybe Steve or Bill, has a thing for trout fishing...check out the fly and fisherman desktop wallpapers]), which is not included as part of any Service Pack (I think) and has horrendous consequences when installed in the improper order if your NT box is running certain Service Pack and other server product (Proxy Server sticks in my mind) combinations.

Throughout their TechNet database, M$ has issued numerous bulletins and heavily discouraged the use of multihomed NT4 boxes, especially those running any type of infrastructure service (domain controller, DHCP, DNS, WINS, etc.)

Win2K has vastly improved routing capabilities, but a true hardware router is still tough to beat.

 

[Woodie]

FreeSco seems pretty good, from what I read on the web-page. Somebody around here always pops in and gives them a plug. (I'm standing in for him today )

--Woodie