The original question asked for comments on the feasibility/benefits of
connecting an Ethernet LAN to a Sun as follows:-
------
|Server|
| & |
|Router|
------
| |
| -------------
| |
------ ------
| | | |
| Hub | | Hub |
| 1 | | 2 |
------ ------
| |
================
First thanks to everyone who answered so promptly
(apologies if I have forgotten anyone):
From: rmills@com.harris.ccd (Richard C. Mills)
From: gdmr@uk.ac.ed.dcs
From: Mike Raffety <mike_raffety@il.us.swissbank.com>
From: Tim Perala <tperala@edu.umn.d.ua>
From: Nate Itkin <Nate-Itkin@com.intel.ptdcs2>
From: yt%hana%drug@net.uu.uunet ('Yoshiro Mizuno')
From: saouli@ch.ethz.math
From: Torsten Metzner <tom@de.uni-paderborn>
From: "I.L. Wagner" <iwagner@mil.navy.cnsy-ian.smtp>
The range of replies was quite wide, varying from "You can't do this"
to "yes this will work but there is no advantage". Interestingly
though, one reply stated they had tried exactly this scenario and
gained better throughput (assuming different IP addresses for each
port obviously). The downside was that some applications did not like
multiple ethernet ports, specifically Oracle. (Not one reply said
10Base-T was a poor choice - just the dual connection strategy.)
The bottom line:
===============
There is no practical advantage to having two ethernet ports
conencting to one logical ethernet segment for performance/redundancy,
though it technically works and for special applications might be
useful.
The solution
============
Use one of the connection strategies listed below:
------ ------
| | |Server|
|Server| | & |
| | |Router|
------ ------
| | |
| | -------------
| | |
------ ------ ------ ------
| | | | | | | |
| Hub | | Hub | | Hub | | Hub |
| 1 | | 2 | | 1 | | 2 |
------ ------ ------ ------
| |
================
(a) (b)
------
| |
--------- | Hub |
Outside | |-------| 1 |
World | | ------
<----->| Router |
| | ------
| |-------| |
--------- | Hub |
| | 2 |
| ------
|
------
| |
|Server|
| |
------
(c)
Scenarios (a) and (b) are cheap and can be tried to determine if it is
better to use a Sun as a poor man's router (IP forwarding only) or to
have potential traffic bottlenecks due to a non-partitioned
network. Scenario (c) appears to be the 'correct' solution but
requires the purchase of an expensive (approx. 5K pounds) dedicated
router.
philip ross
/----------------------------------------------------------------------------\
| Philip Ross, Computer Officer | email: ross@biomed.abdn.ac.uk |
| Dept. Bio-Medical Physics | or p.ross@aberdeen.ac.uk |
| University of Aberdeen | |
| Foresterhill | [+44]-224-685645 (Fax) |
| Aberdeen. AB9 2ZD | [+44]-224-681818 x53210 (Voice) |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 3 is not equal to 2, not even for large values of 2. |
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