Setting up a network and sharing internet

[Colin McGregor]

The following message bounced during the recent mail
list problems, so here it is again...

--- Henry Spencer <henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> > > Or they thought so, anyway.  (People tend to
> have really exaggerated ideas
> > > about how much network bandwidth they need...
> > 
> > I like having at least 100 when I have a new cd
> image and want to
> > transfer it to the machine with the burner in it. 
> 10mbit is awfully
> > painful to wait for.
> 
> If it's an occasional requirement, go have coffee or
> otherwise stretch
> your legs for ten minutes. :-)  Or just work on
> something else meanwhile --
> there are advantages to having an operating system
> that can walk and chew
> gum simultaneously! 

My first network was 10 MB 10Base2 (done just so I
could play Duke Nukem 3D against my brother, and if
you need to JUST connect 2 machines, 10Base2 can make
for a great solution). When I started wanting to
connect more than 2 machines I moved to 10BaseT, and
for several years that was just fine. Then came the
events I described here:

  http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7127

where I was creating as many as 3 "new" CD images a
day and moving them across my home network. This is
what caused me to move to 100BaseT, sort of. To
(greatly) simply the cable runs though the house there
is a 10/100 MB switch in the basement (for basement
and first floor) and a 10 MB hub in the attic (for the
bedrooms). Point is that the server/development boxes
that I will shift CD images between do need the speed,
and are in the basement or first floor den. When I
take my laptop up to my bedroom for a bit of light
duty web surfing then the bottleneck (if any) will be
the speed of my connection to the outside world. Also,
if I ever do run into a situation where a machine that
is on the 10 MB network needs the extra speed, I can
haul it downstairs.

When you are setting up a network you may have part of
the network where speed is not a real issue, and if
you can get a 10 MB hub for free (or effectively so),
you might as well go for it. Mind you I should also
note that when pulling cable I put in Cat 5 (or Cat
5e) everywhere. Replacing the 10 MB hub with a 100 MB
hub would be a 15 minute job, most of that climbing
into/crawling through attic, replacing cable would be
a real nightmare...

> If you have to do it *often*, yes, it gets tiresome
> very quickly.
> 
> > No one has any reason to use less than 100mbit
> anymore.
> 
> Almost true.  That's why I mentioned "what's easy in
> silicon":  the chip
> that holds a 10Mbit interface now almost always
> comes with a 100Mbit one
> bundled in, so there's little reason *not* to use
> 100. 
> 
> (Note that I hedge by saying "almost" and "little": 
> there are still
> circumstances in which the choice is made for you by
> external factors. 
> Very-low-end embedded-control devices may speak only
> 10, and 10 is more
> tolerant of long runs of lousy cable.)

Another situation is if you are playing with old
hardware, for example I have a Sun SPARCstation IPX (a
cute little box). There is no easy way to get that
machine to support 100MB...

>                                                     
>      Henry Spencer
>                                                     
>   henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org


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