Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 2:43 PM
Subject: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Re:
Network Design
It *is* best to keep domains relatively locked in
on themselves, and this helps keep the 80% traffic local and only 20% traffic
external: this reduces broadcasts to outside segments and helps local (i.e
language lab machines) utilise the bandwidth better.
If you *were* to amalgamate these machines onto
one server, then IDE RAID may not work too well. The amount of disk access can
seriously screw around with your hardware's ability to operate properly and
the MTBF could seriously drop..but cost is obviously important there- so
that's your decision.
Your language lab will need a good switch with
excellent circuitry, and perhaps instead of separate servers you may consider
VLANs? A more expensive switch with VLAN capability can offer far more
granular control over network traffic than most other options..it may be worth
looking into that.
Anyway, you are right that your multimedia
accessing school users will need some good bandwidth, and if it's any
consolation to this discussion, I worked in a school where the language lab
had a gigabit connection via fibre to the main PDC in the server room (one
building away), and still had some useage problems at times (high yield times
such as early morning logons, which we solved by logging the machines on
remotely in stages before registration ;-) Our situation was similar in that
250 machines were used in the language/design block, and so we set up a local
workgroup server, answerable to a PDC running NT 4 Server that had quad Xeon
processors and 512MB RAM! The local server was just a PIII 450 at the time
with 512MB RAM, and *seemed* to run ok. SCSI was used in both though. The
switch used was a CISCO 1900 Catalyst, and this being manageable remotely via
telnet helped in admin from a central location. The switch cost £400
second-hand.
Anyway, let us know how the whole thing goes--I'm
interested at least!
Take care,
Paul, CCNA