Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 21:30:20 -0800 From: "Philip J. Koenig" <pjklist@ekahuna.com> To: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: William Carrel <william.a@carrel.org> Subject: Re: 4.5 PRERELEASE - Call for testing Message-ID: <3C2A416C.12065.106F4F3@localhost> In-Reply-To: <C4A5672A-FA7D-11D5-A21C-003065D5E9A4@carrel.org> References: <3C2A1786.17075.63462D@localhost>
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On 26 Dec 2001, at 19:56, William Carrel boldly uttered: > On Wednesday, December 26, 2001, at 06:31 PM, Philip J. Koenig wrote: > > > The problem with this is that we DON'T always want every link to > > operate at its "maximum" setting. > > > > I have little interest in giving huge chunks of bandwidth to every > > miscellaneous user (and along with it the ability to do something > > dumb like bog the whole network down when they accidentally drag > > their entire hard drive icon to a network drive) when their work > > amounts to saving a couple of word processing documents to a server > > each day. Those people don't even need 10Mbps of bandwidth, much > > less 100 or more. > > Using switch settings to obtain this sort of configuration/protection is > at best crude. Try dummynet(4) and/or some QoS capable network > hardware. The switches and NICs for many years already should have the inherent ability to run locked at 10Mbps. Indeed they push this as a "feature". Why should I go spend outrageous sums on overpriced "QoS" hardware or install an entirely new box for this purpose when the existing switches and NICs should already do what I need? > Or use some reporting software in conjunction to a packet > sniffer and levy penalties on those that "abuse" the network. > There are lots of approaches that can make this work. Trying to juryrig your > switch ports to run in some sort of half-baked mode is definately not > the most efficient approach at solving this problem. One thing I have learned over the years is the advantage of treating users like herding cats. It is far more useful to simply make resources unavailable to users that will abuse them than to try and "discipline" them if they do. Keeps down the personal problems, reduces political problems, minimizes the ulcers, and works a lot more reliably too. > > All switches should have configurable ports, IMHO. > > Managed switches aren't for every scenario, particularly when some of us > would rather spend $3000 to purchase mountain bikes than network > equipment for our home. (Granted the prices are coming down on smaller > managed switches, but...) Not really talking about home networks, but since you brought it up: I have 2 switches in my home network - a main HP Procurve and a small Netgear. I want to set a particular workstation (using a common Intel NIC) to half-duplex which is connected to the Netgear - no can do. Having to go out and spend $500 on a switch whose ports can be manually locked instead of $100 on the Netgear seems a bit excessive considering the cost of adding such functionality. (I know, each of those 8 switches costs $0.43) Phil -- Philip J. Koenig pjklist@ekahuna.com Electric Kahuna Systems -- Computers & Communications for the New Millenium To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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