[Leaplist] Improving my network

[Kevin Korb]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 03/29/10 20:03, Damien McKenna wrote:
> On Mar 29, 2010, at 6:15 PM, Kevin Korb wrote:
>> That looks like a pretty good access point.  I may upgrade to an N
>> access point at some point and that one looks like a good choice.
> 
> Yeah, should be pretty good, and I won it in a competition :-)
> 
>> Note however that an access point is not a router.
> 
> That I know.
> 
> Also, this particular AP can only do 11n OR 11g, it can't do both
> simultaneously so I need to account for where the iPhone is going to be
> connected; that was my reason for mentioning having a separate WRT54g
> 11g router.
> 
>> I personally prefer to keep network components separate.  I have a
>> wireless access point instead of a wireless router.  That access point
>> connects directly to my router which is where the routing between my
>> LAN, wireless, and internet all happens.  My router is a low cost low
>> power consumption (Atom based) PC with 3 ethernet ports on it running
>> OpenBSD (yes, Linux works too).
> 
> I'm specifically intending to *not* add more full computers to the
> network, I'm only interested in small components I can put in the closet.

heh, mine is in a closet.  It is a phone book sized Atom computer that
network boots from my server so it has no internal storage (I didn't
even bother to install an optical drive).  Draws about 35W of power but
about half of that is the 2 PCI network cards I added.

>> For the network switch don't skimp.  A good managed switch has more
>> performance and more features than an unmanaged switch.  I would highly
>> recommend my HP ProCurve 1800-24G switch however it appears to have been
>> replaced by the 1810G-24 which I haven't seen in person yet.
> 
> Interesting, though that costs more than I was considering spending for
> both the wired router/firewall and switch combined..

Yeah, the old model that I have was about $100 cheaper.  I am not sure
if they added anything to justify the price increase or if it is just
the shiny newness.

> 
>> Note that having 100Mbit devices on your network will not prevent you
>> from having gig-e devices on it (though it does prevent you from using
>> jumbo frames.  I have 2 10Mbit devices on my LAN and that doesn't affect
>> performance at all.
> 
> Isn't that a contradiction - jumbo frames presumably make the network
> faster, so therefore 100mbit devices would slow it down?

There are two things here.  1000Mbit and jumbo frames.

For jumbo frames to work you really need the entire network to
understand them.  This eliminates 10Mbit and 100Mbit devices as well as
many 1000Mbit devices.  They don't all support jumbo frames.  Jumbo
frames does improve performance but not as much as gigabit does.  The
main point of jumbo frames is to reduce the number of frames needed to
transmit a specific amount of data.  That is beneficial because each
frame regardless of size has overhead in terms of header, CRC
checksumming, and throwing interrupts at the CPU.

However, for plain bits per second a gig-e switch can handle some ports
running at 100Mbit or even 10Mbit without affecting the ports that are
running at gigabit.  It simply isn't important except for when a gigabit
device is talking to a 100Mbit device of course.

> 
>> If you decide against using the AP I will take it ;)
> 
> 
> I might have someone at work who's interested in trading it for an 11n
> router, but I'm not sure he realizes the one I have is just an AP.

An AP is all I would want ;)

> 
> Thanks Kevin.
> 

- -- 
~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~
	Kevin Korb			Phone:    (407) 252-6853
	Systems Administrator		Internet:
	FutureQuest, Inc.		Kevin at FutureQuest.net  (work)
	Orlando, Florida		kmk at sanitarium.net (personal)
	Web page:			http://www.sanitarium.net/
	PGP public key available on web site.
~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAkuxQtEACgkQVKC1jlbQAQcU4QCg8bV3uwlt+fmOwevWE/KD1YQC
RNgAn0wur3AcuD1j1EBcTBu+9z4WJs1B
=D42T
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.