On 21 February 2011 06:02, Elmer E. Dow <elmere...@att.net> wrote: > Greetings:
<Snipped> > 300 Mhz processor > boot manager on 3.5-inch diskette so it can boot from diskette, CD or hard > drive > ethernet jack on motherboard > 5 pci slots > 4 isa slots > (I have a pci nic and 2 isa nics on hand, plus there's that built-in jack on > the board) > > I'm leaning toward using the above machine since it has both pci and isa > slots for nics (and an ethernet jack on the motherboard) so I won't have to > buy a switch right away. I'll be able to connect the firewall/router box > direct to the networked machines. (Will I need crossover cables?) However, > it's the slowest of the bunch and I suspect that those isa nics might be > very slow and problematic. Would I be best off just buying a network switch > or replacing the isa nics with pci nics? Would one of my faster old machines > be a more practical choice here? I have the following available: Throw in the ISA nics, they will be fine abeit most probably limited to 10Mbit, fine for internet but probably a bit tedious transferring anything larger than a couple of gigs. You'll be wanting 100Mbit pretty fast. Yes you will need crossover cables. I'd also suggest a static ip configuration with a setup like this, as you'll only have one computer at the end of each ethernet segement you won't gain anything from DHCP, you'd need a subnet declaration for each nic and a pool statement. It would be much easier to configure with static ip's. Something else to look into is to make sure your cable modem is plugged into one of the 10Mbit nics unless your internet connection goes faster than 1M Byte per sec you won't notice any speed gain, save any 100Mbit nics you have for your client machines. Some programs you can have a look at running are: Apache - Local intranet webserver for a homepage shared across machines, Samba - Share files across windows / linux machines, Squid - Caching proxy server - save some download bandwith, Bind - Run your own caching name server, Hook it all up and have a play ;-) Adrian -- 24x7x365 != 24x7x52 Stupid or bad maths? <erno> hm. I've lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my apartment it is. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/AANLkTi=joisnwnbeaomgzl7kl7cwoz4s7mveewe4c...@mail.gmail.com
