-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 19 April 2002 14:23, Aaron Ingebrigtsen wrote: > I started pondering recently over distributed networking, which is > obviously being achieved by Freenet, but I was thinking more along the > lines of Hardware. The network architecture here at school is Ethernet, > with hubs and servers and a backbone and stuff. I asked my teacher if it > would be possible to connect a bunch of computers toghether with Ethernet > without useing any central servers. He said that it could be done, but I > would have to use a hub.
Yes, doing a P2P network like that has been used for a long time. SMB (which is used in Windows networking) is really designed to operate in a P2P manner. However, it has been extended into a more client-server network, first with WINS and later with Active Directory. Much of Microsoft's documentations says not to use P2P with anything more then 10 hosts. Most network adminstrators I've met are more pessmistic then that; they usualy say 5 hosts. SMB does use an awful lot of broadcasting, even when you use it in a client-server manner, so this really hurts it's scalability. Humorously scary fact: NetBIOS (one of the networking layers SMB can use), was never designed to route. Some people say "NetBIOS does not cross routers", but this is not entirely accurate. If it isn't explicitly denied on SNA routers, NetBIOS will broadcast itself accross the entire network *shudder*. - -- DOS Air: All the passengers go out onto the runway, grab hold of the plane, push it until it gets in the air, hop on, jump off when it hits the ground again. Then they grab the plane again, push it back into the air, hop on, et cetra. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iEYEARECAAYFAjzA+CEACgkQqpueKcacfLSTIQCdEvUY9zSokOJBFaNTDz4K483I RxAAn2W4EFbrTS80zqFQafUUGgaMGaUW =bHvr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Chat mailing list Chat at freenetproject.org http://lists.freenetproject.org/mailman/listinfo/chat
