Re: [TCLUG:15162] Networking newbie Q

["Kevin R. Bullock" <kbullock@ringworld.org>]

On Sat, 25 Mar 2000, Philip C Mendelsohn wrote:

> I have reached a critical mass of old machines and Ethernet cards.  I
> have 1 3Com 3c509, 2 Novell NE2000T's, and another indeterminate Novell
> ethernet card.  (I might have a couple of more 3Com's coming from the
> mother-in-law's workplace.)  Any particular problems I should expect from
> those cards, or is it all pretty standard old workhorse stuff?

Except for the indeterminate novell card, all of it sounds like solid
stuff. I work with 3c509s and an ne2k card regularly, and support is
flawless.

As a side note, it's easy to find 3c509s *cheap*, but I've also discovered
that for a PCI system, RealTek's 100baseTX cards are available for about
$12 a piece and are also solidly supported. See kernel docs for info about
supported cards.

> I take it as a good sign that I am consistently 10BaseT (RJ-45 conn. --
> I've got the right term?)  But sooner or later I'm going to need an active
> hub, right?  I suspect that it is possible but not the best
> choice to put a few cards in one machine and have it be a router.  Does
> the Cisco 675 do 10BaseT, and I could just kill all the birds by getting
> DSL?  Or should I have another layer.  I hear I can get an active hub for
> about $50, but I'd like to know what's a good one to find, and if I can
> even come up with something old and functional for less, that'd be better.

First, yes, it's an RJ-45 connector.

If you have a "critical mass", which i'm taking to mean more than 2, you
need to have something to pass packets around, and unless you have more
than twice as many network cards as you have computers, using a PC as a
router may not be the greatest idea, especially if you actually want to
use that box for something useful. I don't know about the DSL hookups (see
list archives), but for generic ethernet networking, it's hard to go wrong
with a cheap hub. Even the cheap little 5-port Soho (generic, cheap,
mftd. in Taiwan) hub that I bought on a whim one day works for my
purposes. Linksys makes solid stuff cheap. Poke around at <insert favorite
computer store here> and find something. It'll work for you for a while
just to play around with.

Pacem in Terris / Mir / Shanti / Salaam / Heiwa
Kevin R. Bullock