Toid's Network Setup (in the year 2000)
Excellent, you have chosen to come to one of the nerdiest pages on my site. This shows me that obviously this page is useful or you just got click happy with your mouse and ended up here. It doesn't matter, cause I will show you my network, and try and talk about how I got it all set up.
The Problem
As Ted and I moved into an apt, we had to map out how we were going to connect to the internet, share resources and save on not having to buy another phone line. We knew that if we made one of our computers a "server" computer, then we could connect to the internet through that, and have the other computer connect to it, via an ethernet cable and do it that way. However, this poses a problem. Say I am working on my computer, and I am the "server" and Ted is downloading off of Napster. Let's say I restart my computer. His download stops transfering and he loses what he was doing. The same would work the other way around if Ted was the "server" and I connected through him. When he would restart, I would lose my work unless he told me he was restarting, and this would be a hassel, so we decided to take all my scrap parts and build a third computer that would act as our "server", enter LeLu.
The Linux Server - aka Lelu
Every network has to have at least one computer act as the "server". Basically if you only own one computer I guess you could theoretically call your desktop computer a server if you wanted to cause it is doing all the tasks you need it to perform.
Lelu is the black computer on the right, and my personal computer is on the left. Some important things to notice also in this picture is the hub and the cable modem. I will get to those in a minute but first lemme spout out some nice specs about Lelu. She runs Redhat 7.0 and is a Pentium 166mhz with 96 MB of ram. Doesn't sound too speedy for a server, but hey, it's running Linux and therefore doesn't have to be! :)
Toid's Computer
Here is a picture of my computer, and basically it's nothing too exciting. Currently I am dual booting between Windows 2000 and Redhat 6.2. I have a pentium 2-400mhz with 160mb of ram and have a 17 inch Mag monitor. The most important feature though about my computer is my trackball mouse which IMHO, gives me superior control in games like Quake!
My computer also has a bunch of stuff in it and all the add-ons like a cd writer and dvd player, but I figured I didn't need to get into that cause ya know, it's kinda boring!
Ted's Computer
These are some pretty funny pics of Ted's computer. His computer is hurting pretty bad cause his power supply fan went out, causing his computer temperature to rise really fast. To keep it from overheating he keeps a fan on it at all times. He runs windows 98 and has a celeron and 64 mb of ram.
Do you see that gravis gamepad sitting there? Yeah, that's mine and he borrowed it the first month my sophmore year and he still hasn't given it back...that was over a year ago Ted! hahaha
The Hub
Ok, so we have a server, and we have two personal computers that we need to hook up to this, how on earth is this going to happen? Well, you use a hub. The only bad thing about a hub is that it has to have a physical wire coming to it from every computer on the network in some way or fashion, so here is some nice pics of our living room with ethernet cable and surround sound wires running all over the place.
I have a Linksys hub cause it was cheap and I like Linksys better than 3com just cause 3com is way overpriced. Anyhow, it has five ports and connected to them I have, my computer, Ted's computer, my laptop, and the Linux server with the fifth connection free for me to hook up anybody who brings over a computer for me to work on. With all the computers connected to this, they all connect to LeLu which then in turn connects to the cable modem.
The Cable Modem
If you don't know what a cable modem is, don't worry, you don't need one. Haha, just joking. A cable modem is almost 100 times faster than a normal modem, and uses your tv cable as your internet connection. You then take that connection out of the cable modem and plug it into your computer (in our case, our server LeLu) and then you can get really fast downloads! We use RoadRunner for our service provider and it has worked pretty good. The only downside is that since we run it on Linux, we can't call technical support when things go wrong and therefore just kinda have to figure it out on our own. so I guess the next question is, if you can't call helpdesk and you have to do this all on your own, what's the advantage of your setup? Well, it's easy, cause with the exception of a few kernel memory leaks every now and then, Lelu won't crash.
Putting it all Together
Alright, so here's the flow of information. The internet comes in through our cable that would normally be used only for our tv, but in our case, both our TV and internet travel through it, and into our cable modem. From there, it goes to LeLu, which acts as our DNS, DHCP, Intranet, samba and FTP server all in one. From our Linux server it goes to our hub which then sends the information to whichever computer on the network requested the information. Kinda neat huh? This way, all computers are on the net simultaneously and if the internet goes down, that doesn't mean our computer is necessairly affected and vice versa. If our personal computer crashes, it won't affect any other computer (unless of course we are trying to play a game or send files back and forth but I'm trying to be simplistic) Overall, I am really happy with how this is working and to think Ted and I shared a 28.8 modem connection for the whole summer, wow...we weren't nerds then huh?
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
