[tech] Switches and hubs...

[Simon Fryer]

Bingle

> A while ago Nick Bannon tapped:

> Well, it could be the router, then the best option would probably be
> to re-arrange the network to put the router on the 100 network and then
> router the whole 101 network through it, and reconfigure all our backbone
> systems of course.
> 
> My preferred network layout:
> 
>                100.x incoming
>                       | 10M       10M
>     +-------------- router ----------------+
>     | 100M            | 100M               |
> 10/100 switch      10/100 hub            delni/hub/...
> | | | | | | |      | | | ||||            |||||||||||||
> fast boxen and     fast but insecure     dec net/user net/...
> one or more        boxen, xterms
> 10Mbps hubs        etc, maybe 10M hub

This is good. I can't say I have any problems with this. 

> maybe with another 10M interface out of the router that I can't draw yet.
> 
> The 2 x 100Mbps network cards for the router would need committee
> to approve though, and it would also be nice to run the router in a
> system that can take 4 x PCI network cards (can the present one?) -
> the 2 existing 10M ones and 2 new 100M ones (hence it would have to stay
> FreeBSD for the existing 10M 3com cards).

I think the UCC should get a couple of decient 100Mb/s cards. These are 
something thta UCC will need more and more of in the future. How many exec have 
not gone to Melbourne for the weekend??? Can Bers, Luyer, Nick and Sam/[TAM]
be all in the same place for a few minutes to approve this purchase? 

> The new 100BaseT network cards might be about $114 for 3Coms, and $60-$70
> for D-Link DFE-530TX'es or Netgear tulip's like Grahame's.
 
Are the Netgear tulips based around a Compaq chipset as their name suggest? If
so I can not see any problems with getting these cards. 

See Ya
Simon

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Well, an engineer is not concerned with the truth; that is left to 
philosophers and theologians: the prime concern of an engineer is 
the utility of the final product."  
Lectures on the Electrical Properties of Materials, L.Solymar, D.Walsh