Lan Party. Networking side.

[Lord_Flint]

Ok i am kind of new to networking. So i really could use any good tuts you guys know of, I am looking at setting up a 100 person lan in the next few months, i need ot build servers, and a network.

I dont know what type of Hub/router/switchs work well togeather.
I have read one guide that said i will need one 10/100 8port switch, and a hub for ever 8 players. where does the router fall in there? so many bad tuts, i need some good ones.


Any help would be cool. thank you.

Lord_Flint

 

[office politics]

the switch with hubs may be more cost efficient. But by your description a 8port switch with 8port hubs connected, thats 8*8 or 64 nodes.

I'd suggest buying a switch stack

compare prices for dell powerconnect switches

here's what i suggest you get we have these at my work. You'll need three switches and you'll stack them so they act as one switch

You want to connect your nodes directly to switches because it provides dedicated bandwidth and allows no collisions to occur.

you could use a class c address to provide you with 253 addresses, example 192.168.1.0 network address 255.255.255.0 subnet mask.

You'll want to setup a dhcp server so you don't have to manually configure each machine's ip.

 

[Lord_Flint]

Cant I set up a network with Switchs on switchs? that Switch was 600$ and only has 48 slots.

I guess, i could get 3 of them. but that would be 1800. And i am not sure if i want to spend that much right now, what if i did like one 8 por 10/100/1000 switch to 5 24 port 10/100 switches. Would that not work for a gaming network that is going to be run on a lan once a month? that would cost around the price for one of them 48 ports.


What do you think about that?Would it work almost as good? I know it is more hardware to set up. and maintain.

Server->10/100/1000 8 port->24port10/100->nodes

Lord_Flint?

 

[mikesgroovin]

yes, you can do that. but you have to realize that with each switch that you add to the network, you are adding a new collision domain....
basically....the more network devices you have....the more traffic that will bump heads with each other (collisions). so, the speed may not be everything that you hope for in a gaming environment.
the reason why most 32 port and 48 port switches are so expensive is because most of them are managed switches (like the dell above).....great switches!!!! but, do you really need all that?? not so much.... you are going to have to dish out some bucks regardless though....but try these instead. SMC is a great brand...trusted brand as well. and with the rebates....you'll only spend about $600 when it's all said and done too! now you can spend the extra $1200 that you saved and buy beer for all of the gamers!

 

[Lord_Flint]

So i am still going to need about 5 of them. So how do i set them up to min the Collisions?

Thanks.
Lord_Flint

 

[mikesgroovin]

you can't.....especially unmanaged switches. with managed switches, you can better propigate traffic, but you are still going to have a lot of collisions. they way to minimize collisions is to minimize the number of swithces you have.

with the product that i linked for you it would be the setup that you were just speaking of.

server > 8 port switch >>>>>>> (7) 24 port switches. you won't be able to have (8) switches coming off of the the 8-port switch because you'll need a connection from the server too!

 

[Lord_Flint]

Now what about that gig switch, is it really usless to have uplink to the server a gig per sec? That should cut out the bottle neck being the link to the server right?

Lord_flint

 

[mikesgroovin]

no, having a gig backbone is a great idea. if the bottlenecks exist at that particular segment....yes, then a good brand GB network card and a good switch will do the trick. in my opinion, i would purchase two or even three GB network adapters for your server. since you have about 100 users you can split them up into groups (50/50) or (33/34/33). this will dramatically decrease bottlenecks to the server. so, the setup would look more like this:


Server 10/100/1000 NIC1 (192.168.0.1) ---> Switched network segment with 33 nodes

Server 10/100/1000 NIC2 (192.168.0.2) ---> Switched network segment with 34 nodes

Server 10/100/1000 NIC3 (192.168.0.3) ---> Switched network segment with 33 nodes