Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 11:03:01 -0500 (CDT) From: Chris Dillon <cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us> To: Atipa <freebsd@atipa.com> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Will 8 Intel EtherExpress PRO 10/100's be a problem? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980626103304.13948B-100000@duey.hs.wolves.k12.mo.us> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980625222607.24370A-100000@altrox.atipa.com>
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On Thu, 25 Jun 1998, Atipa wrote: > > > I really hope -hackers is the best place for this... i didn't want to > > crosspost. > > > > Within the next few months, i will be needing to set up a router for our > > internal network, tying together 7 networks, with some room to grow. I > > plan on buying a rather expensive chassis from Industrial Computer source. > > It has an interesting partially-passive backplane with a PII-233 or faster > > and chipset mounted on it (LX or BX chipset, I believe) with everything > > else on a daughtercard and 9PCI/8ISA slots. Something like the model > > 7520K9-44H-B4 with redundant power supplies. > > Cool. > > > Basically my questions are: > > > > 1) Will there be any problems with using three or more host-to-PCI > > bridges? > > Maybe not in the kernel, but I'd start to worry about saturating your > buses. You are really bumping up against some I/O bottlenecks in my > estimation. I'm rather hoping that three 133MB/sec PCI busses won't have any trouble passing at max about 30MB/sec worth of data (10MB/sec per card, three cards per bus). Theoretically even one PCI bus could handle all 8 of those cards.. _theoretically_... :-) > > 2) Will there be any problems using up to 8 Intel Etherexpress Pro > > 10/100's? If so, can I use a combination of those and some DEC > > 21[0,1]4[0,1] cards? > > If the answer to question #1 is "No", then the same should be true for > question #2. Of course. > > 3) If i ever end up using natd for all of this, would there be any > > problems with it servicing those 7 networks (probably max 100 hosts per > > network)? > > Dunno. Never used natd, but I would not _expect_ any difficulties. I didn't think there would be any problem either, but experience counts for more than speculation. I've already used it with 5 networks, but only about 5 hosts per network (small class lab). :-) > > I initially thought of just getting a nice ATX rackmount case and a nice > > ASUS motherboard and using some of those ZNYX 4-port fast-ethernet cards. > > Several reasons why I like the above idea better is because the support > > for the Intel cards is apparently better, and replacing bad NICs would be > > simple and inexpensive. If I DO end up going the ZNYX route, are there > > any known problems with those 4-port cards? I'd need two of them, of > > course, and the motherboard would most likely have an Intel card built > > onto it also. Maybe I'll even eventually throw an ETInc sync serial card > > in there for my T1 and use our Cisco 2514 elsewhere. > > Yow. I think you should diversify your services, and spread out the I/O > and interfaces over a couple machines. You really don't want to put all > your eggs in one basket. Smaller, more digestible chunks would mean > cheaper hardware (to the point that your NET would probably be less), less > disastrous failures, and fewer bottlenecks related to architecture (PCI, > RAM, disk I/O, etc.). I would have to put all my eggs into a Cisco router basket, or an "IP-switch" basket.. Either way, its gonna happen. This is not ultra-critical. We are just a public K-12 school after all, and losing service temporarily isn't going to cause anything but maybe some lack-of-Internet withdrawl symptoms and a small management headache for me, at this point in our overall scheme of things. Maybe later on it will become more critical. Having said that, it would seem that the system I described above might be overkill, but after careful thought and seeing another local school (actually a community college with a very smart man at the computer wheel) do the same thing with BSDi, i figured it would work just fine for my purposes. And for a lot less money than with other solutions. I just had second thoughts about putting the sync serial card in that machine, since the way it will be laid out now, i could literally place a switch in place of this router and reconfigure our gateway router and all would work again in the event of failure. The reason I'm not doing that in the first place is, among other reasons, switches pass the hailstorms of broadcast traffic that Winblows clients and servers like to generate, and routers don't. PLUS, I will be able to do NAT and maybe hand back a few of the /24's we have (I'm keeping at least one). > > Other options I would have are either a 8-port or more Cisco router (ugh, > > expensive), or a 3COM gigabit layer-3 IP switch (THAT would be nice, but > > the pricetag is in the 5-digit area). I would MUCH rather use a very nice > > FreeBSD system for this job. > > Or two ? :) Sure, I could create some kind of tiered approach with multiple routers with redundant links between all the tiers (and use OSPF or something?). Its a great idea, actually, but too expensive, and a bit complicated... Glad I thought of it. :-) > > > By the way, anyone know of any place cheaper than ICS for the components I > > need? Even just someplace that sells good ATX rackmount cases and power > > supplies (Jinco maybe)? > > www.atipa.com :) NICE. I don't see any rackmount cases though. Do you sell or can you get any? If so, you're at the top of my list, just under a local guy that says he can get me the stuff I want for wholesale. :-) > Regards, > Kevin -- Chris Dillon - cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us - cdillon@inter-linc.net /* FreeBSD: The fastest and most stable server OS on the planet. 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