[olug] Initial Network Configuration

[Trent Melcher]

An unmanaged switch is basically you plug it in and that is it.  Managed
switches allow you to setup VLANs, change ports speed, SNMP statistics
on each port, you can also setup trunk groups for traffic isolation.
Some managed switches allow flow control, bridging, multicast filtering,
etc.

2K MAC Address memory is the amount of MAC addresses the switch will
hold in its cache,  on Managed switches the cache time can be changed to
fit your needs,  This helps because the switch doesn't have to broadcast
out to every port to find a specific IP,  it will use what's in its
cache table till the expire time. If your network is running static IPs
and the ports on which they reside doesn't change much, this can be set
fairly high.

Layout all depends on the equipment, number of locations,  types of
usage.
Cisco, Intel, and 3Com all have Networking How-To's on their websites.
I don't have the specific URLs on hand though.

Hope this helps you out some.

Trent

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 |Trent Melcher                     |
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-----Original Message-----
From: olug-bounces at olug.org [mailto:olug-bounces at olug.org] On Behalf Of
Eric Penne
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2003 6:44 PM
To: olug at olug.org
Subject: [olug] Initial Network Configuration

I'm putting together a proposal for one of my clients (elementary and
high
school) for the revamp of a network.  The network has approx. 150 PCs. 
The network needs expandability.  It will be a mixed OS network with
Mac,
Win, and Linux.  There will be some LTSP clients (keyboarding lab),
email,
fileserver, firewall, DHCP, internal authorative DNS, and external
forwarding DNS cache.  I want to have the email server behind the
firewall.  The webserver is hosted by the ESU IIRC.

My biggest concern is the network infrastructure.  The LTSP may or may
not
be on the same switch as the LTSP clients.  The fileserver could see
heavy
traffic.

Questions:
What is the difference between managed and unmanaged switches?

Some switches say 2k MAC address memory.  How could that affect the
performance?

What is a good layout for switches vs. clients and daisy chaining them
together?

Are there any good references on the web?  Good books to purchase?

This is for a school that is going through budget cuts and is looking at
Linux on the backend to save money, but also wants to make sure their
infrastructure is solid enough to last a few more years in case more
budget cuts happen.

Thanks
Eric Penne


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