At 01:10 PM 6/18/01 -0700, James A Roush wrote:
>We recently moved into a house with a DSL line and more 7 comuters. Half
>the computers are on one end of the the house and half more or les on the
>other end. What we would like to do is build a box with thre NICs. The
>first would be for the DSL line and the other two NICs would each service a
>hub. Is this feasible? FYI, I'm a Linux newbie.
Yes, but it is doing things the hard way. It would be easier to connect the
router to one hub, then daisy-chain a second hub to that hub for the other
end of the ouse. Unless you have some more fundamental reason for wanting
the two sets of hosts on separate LANs.
>I also have the questions:
>
> 1: I've never used hubs before, how do you assign IP addresses to each
>port. Can somebody post a URL(s) for HOW-TOs about this?
You don't. You assign IP addresses to the hosts on the LAN. The hub just
connects everything together. The only time you assign an IP address to a
hub is when you are using a service to manage the hub (like SNMP) that
requires the hub itself to have an IP address. The same is true of switches,
BTW.
> 2: When using multiple hubs like this, are these referred to as subnet?
What makes it a subnet is that it is on a different interface in the router,
not that it uses multiple hubs. In fact, "subnet" isn't quite th right term
here; the two groups of computers are on different LANs or networks. The
term "subnet" really applies to breaking a large IP address space into two
or more smaller ones. But a lot of people will use the term "subnetting" to
describe what you are asking about ... it's a "mostly harmless" bit of
imprecision.
>
> 3: Is it possible to "daisy-chain" the hubs?
Probably. You don't say if this is a 10Mbps or 100 Mbps setup. The 10BaseT
standards allow for up to 5 hubs (I think) between any two hosts on the LAN.
The 100BaseT standards are more restrictive, allowing only 2 (I think).
Either way, it should work for you, though. Remember that for daisy
chaining, you need to use either an "uplink" port on one (not both) of the
hubs, or a crossover cable between them.
> 4: What are good brands for inexpensive hubs? What gotchas shouod I
>watch out for? Also, I'll need to PCI NICs. Recommendations?
I've always bought whatever was cheap that week at my local supplier, and
I've never been disappointed. Hubs are simple devices; little can go wrong
with them.
NICs are trickier. 3Com NICs are great but pricey. I've had a lot of luck
with many brands of tulip-driver NICs, and they tend to be cheap. Also,
RTL8139-based NICs and motherboards that include NICs using the eepro100
module have served me well. Others can probablt make more current
recommendations, though; it's been 6 months or more since I've needed to buy
a NIC, and things change fast here.
--
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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