Re: ethner card problem

[Jonathan Q <j-q@example.com>]

A.Sajjad Zaidi (sajjad@example.com) wrote:

> So whats a good place to buy network equipment? We need to get 24 port, rack mountable
> hubs that support Remote Monitoring and SNMP.

Drifting off of *nix topic a bit, but...

To start with, you don't want hubs.  Hubs are evil.  With a hub,
everything is in the same collision domain - that is, a hub
puts all devices on the same length of cable, just arranged
in a star topology, so you get contention for the media.  If
you have, for example, a 16-port Fast Ethernet hub with all
16 ports used (and assuming a separate uplink port), those 
16 hosts are all competing for bandwidth and access on the same
100 megabit cable.  If you have a Fast Ethernet switch, each
port is its own collision domain (the host attached to it
has 100 megabits all to itself).   You can see the performance
advantage to this.  Of course, you can also plug hubs into 
switch ports, so you could have a 1924 at the center of your
office LAN, and have fast ether going to islands of desks in
each part of your office, and have a fast ether hub with 5 or 10
machines connected to it at each island.  That still leaves decent
bandwidth for each machine at the island.

A faster solution still, and one that doesn't cost much more,
is to have a 1912 or 1924 at the center of your LAN, and put
low-cost fast ether 8 port switches at each desk island.  
A Corega 8-port 10/100 switch is only about 6,000 yen, and we
have had good results with them.  

Not all that many stores carry Cisco gear, so I'm not sure
what to tell you on that (we buy ours direct from a Cisco
reseller), but you might try Plat'home or Aisan.  Anybody
else have any suggestions on where to buy?


Jonathan Q <j-q@example.com>               Engineering Division
Exodus Communications K.K.                          http://www.exodus.co.jp/
Tel:  +81 3-5334-1700   Fax: +81 3-5334-1702        Direct: +81 3-5334-1756