From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Nov 6 7:28:33 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from sanson.reyes.somos.net (freyes.static.inch.com [207.240.212.43]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0818514BE0 for ; Sat, 6 Nov 1999 07:28:17 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from fran@reyes.somos.net) Received: from tomasa (tomasa.reyes.somos.net [10.0.0.11]) by sanson.reyes.somos.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id KAA71483; Sat, 6 Nov 1999 10:26:17 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from fran@reyes.somos.net) Message-Id: <199911061526.KAA71483@sanson.reyes.somos.net> From: "Francisco Reyes" To: "Christopher Michaels" , "David Nobles" Cc: "FreeBSD Questions (E-mail)" Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 10:27:54 -0500 Reply-To: "Francisco Reyes" X-Mailer: PMMail 98 Professional (2.01.1600) For Windows 98 (4.10.1998) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: RE: Home LAN (HW & SW) Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, 5 Nov 1999 15:33:47 -0500, Christopher Michaels wrote: >For the hardware to physically wire the house. I would just suggest having >RJ-45 jacks in each room, and wire it all with CAT-5 UTP cable. Have them >all come to a common point in the house and plug into either a HUB or a >SWITCH. > >Personally I would suggest a 10/100 Mbit Switch as you'll get better >performance from a switch than from a hub, but the switch would come at a >higher cost. >> I'm not sure if this is the right list but here goes. I'm in the process >> of building a house and I'd like to replace my old Peer-Peer Win98 'Lan' >> with a server running FreeBSD. All other PCs will have Win98 for now. Dave I would like to echo Christopher Michaels comment and add a few thoughts. Definitely the most important thing is to have the wiring done and having RJ-45 on each room is definitely a good suggestion. I would say at least two Jacks and in any room that you expect to have the most computers 4 jacks. Alternatively you could have 2 jacks everywhere and as needed put Hubs. The Hub Vs Switch debate is all about price. One possible approach would be to start with a Hub and after you have determined if it enough then decide for the switch. The difference can be VERY notiable in terms of cost. Perhaps a 100Mb hub may be a good intermediate point between price and performance. In terms of the computer for FreeBSD due look at the list, but most IDE HDs will work and for the video card you could look at the list for Xfree since that is what needs to support it's graphic mode. One suggestion I have in regards to this is to try and play with FreeBSD now or to get a cheap (i.e. less than $100) computer to play. Like any other OS FreeBSD takes some time to learn. In particular you want to play with Samba which is what will allow your windows computers to see FreeBSD as a server. If you are going to connect to the net by modem best to buy it external. Best of luck. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message