I'm going through router's faster then water

[marurun]

He doesn't need Cisco equipment... Cisco stuff is over-priced and beginning to lag in quality compared to some competitors. They've been at the top of the food chain for too long and they're suffering from it.

For a good switch, a consumer gigabit from SMC would be fine. Like this:
http://www.smc.com/index.cfm?event=view ... 4&pid=1138

[lordofduct]

Hello lordofduct,

It seems that the primary use of your network is to stream data/music/video internally, so you don't need a router.. what you need is a gigabit switch (if you use only ethernet connections and not wireless ones) plus a router.

The switch "switches" packets at a very fast speed not consuming processing power in the router. The router (or a firewall if security is your main concern) only connects you to the Internet, and if it is needed it acts as a DHCP server, assigning IP address to yours PCs and consoles. So the traffic between your server and the consoles NEVER goes through the router.

Diagram:

PCs and Xbox's---[SWICTH]---[ROUTER/FW]----Internet


Linksys makes great home-class switches.

If you want to stream to the Internet or want an integrated router and switch that can handle your traffic, I recommend you to move to Cisco but please be aware that Cisco's 851 and 871 routers cost like $300 to $500. You can replace the Cisco Router by a Cisco firewall, as long as the router is only handling your Internet connection (I mean doing NAT and connecting to your service provider), I would say Cisco ASA 5505 that costs like $400.

I hope this helps.

Best regards

JF

I have a switch as well... and the issues are still occuring over the router (I must as I have 10 machines... not many router's with 10 ports out there). I know they are occuring over the router because I've ran it directly across the router OR over the switch. It happens in both places.

The thing is, I thought it might be the wires themselves... but the router's all work great for the first couple months and then gradually degrade after a couple months. It's not like I'm getting bad speeds per say (when it connects I get great speeds), the DHCP pool just drops randomly and then restarts.




some what off topic... strangely though if I have my XBOX360 on the switch I get shit streaming speeds from my Media Center PC. Putting it directly on the router fixed this... that was weird.

[marurun]

Some of that may depend on whether the switch and router are true switching devices or just broadcast devices (ala hubs) in disguise.

[lordofduct]

In my house I have the router and switch (a netgear gs116 16 port gigabit switch, yes a true switch so they say, but on the lower side of the price range) in my closet and a 4 port hub in the garage (as there are 4 computers and a 360 in there, but only 2 wall jacks).

I just go the new router though, gonna hook it up and see how it goes.

[lordofduct]

HAHAHAHA! My luck is phenomenal!

SO, my router was crapping out on me... this I know (as the issues were occuring on the router itself when the switch was disconnected). Issues like the lag and disconnecting from the internet were the router's fault (those issues have so far been cleared up).

But the random IP drops... they aren't drops. The stupid switch is causing IP conflicts (Vista actually figured it out for me... I guess this crap shit OS isn't that bad).


yey, more work ahead for me to fully diagnose this stupid fucking network.

[marurun]

Unless the switch has some latent DHCP capabilities, it shouldn't be causing IP conflict unless it's just broken. I had a damaged hub at work that was causing computers to reboot, so I guess I can only be so surprised.

While you are at it, go ahead and replace your hub, too. That'll do your network no good, either.

[lordofduct]

Unless the switch has some latent DHCP capabilities, it shouldn't be causing IP conflict unless it's just broken. I had a damaged hub at work that was causing computers to reboot, so I guess I can only be so surprised.

While you are at it, go ahead and replace your hub, too. That'll do your network no good, either.

Replacing both the shit hub, and the switch. I've got a few issues I've got to bang out in this network... but really even if these things aren't the heart of it, they certainly haven't helped.

I know this for a fact because the new router has boosted performance (well worth the buy). And the switch I know has issues, if I hook up my 360 and MediaCenter PC through the switch and run the network test in the 360 for streaming video, it passes back that I have 'low to average' speeds available. If I hook them up via the new Router I get the thing maxed out (they show a line graph visual representation... on the switch it hovers around the middle sometimes diving below the 'good enough for TV quality' line... on the router at sits at the very top of the graph and doesn't budge!... and these are both gigabit capable switches)

Strange thing is, of all the issues that have cleared up from the new router. And by taking the switch off the network for now (until the new one comes in) still ONE of my issues remains: randomly when I stream media I drop connection... not a straight up dropped connection, just like the connection get's clogged up. That reminds me, I should test this with out this hub in the garage connected... and through my xbox (with xbmc).


... don't really want to right now though, I'm having so much fun programming. Just set up a constraint for an object to stick it on the surface of a sphere and walk around. Check it:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v333/ ... traint.flv

now it is time to inject this code into my game and use it for the real deal!

--Note-- I create all my major physics class's separately from my game itself so I can bang out all bugs, that way if any bugs occur when injected in the game I know it isn't the new class and instead a conflict between my class and the game. Hence why visually the video looks kind of bland with out flash and graphics going eeeeeeeyyy!

[lordofduct]

So check this... I 'believe' (finger's crossed) that I have fixed all my issues (the final ones will be fixed when the new switch's come in the mail).

You gotta here the amount of BAD luck I had (knock on wood, hope more things don't happen now):
Router was dropping connection with cable modem, and clearing DHCP pool (fixed with new router)
Switch in server closet had horrible lag and did an awful job at swapping transfers between gigabit connected machines with 100mbit machines (can't avoid this as they DON'T make gigabit for xbox360, a shaim)
Switch in bedroom is just garbage (not sure if it caused actual issues, I just know it's a crappy piece of 5 dollar 10mbit garbage)

and the final issue was caused by my samba server not issueing unixgroup names to the ntgroup names... as well not assigning itself as the domain master. Not sure WHY (strange thing, this occured on my last build of linux, and this build... did a complete update just a week ago, but this issue was happening before that...)

After finishing up the final step, I am left with laggy speeds between users on the switch... just 3 days and my new switch will be here! WOOT!

[lordofduct]

for those of you who might be wondering what exactly was going on with my server:

net groupmap for some reason had removed my domain users "Domain Users", "Domain Admins", and "Domain Guests".

I got call back errors in my /var/log/daemon.log file of:

Oct 23 22:23:00 server1 winbindd[10025]: [2007/10/23 22:23:00, 0] libsmb/clientgen.c:cli_receive_smb(112)
Oct 23 22:23:00 server1 winbindd[10025]: Receiving SMB: Server stopped responding

along with a marriad of other errors proclaiming port drops, tube disconnects, and innability to make the Server the Domain Master.

I'm assuming this all meant winbindd (the tool used to map NT users to the unix users in samba) wasn't making the connections. I simply resolved the issue by adding all my hosts on the network to the /etc/hosts file:

192.###.###.### computerName
""
""

and then readded the ntuser groups back into 'net groupmap' like so:

sudo net groupmap add rid=513 ntuser="Domain Users" unixgroup=users ---(**yourUnixUserGroupName... in my case 'users'**)

the rid number is the flag for different users... for nt users it goes as so
rid=512, Domain Admins
rid=513, Domain Users
rid=514, Domain Guests

also if you create a file /etc/samba/smbusers
and then add a line connecting Administrator to root like so:

sudo echo "root = Administrator" > /etc/samba/smbusers

and then restart samba:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

you can then access the samba as root via your administrator account on Windows... I wouldn't advise this if you are using your server to share across the internet with limited firewalls.

...
Yeah, linux is a bitch... I don't advise the faint of heart to use it as! It isn't as easy as all those techno geeks out there try to proclaim it is.

If you wanted to just create a simple Samba share, it actually isn't that hard (in gnome there is usually a simple tab in the networking section to perform the job just like in Windows). But for setting up file servers and the sort... freakin' headache inducing!

Samba - samba is the protocol that translates networking sharing between Windows Machines and Unix Machines. It's kinda like AppleBridge of other shit Mac's use... actually I think Apple even uses Samba. (don't know, hate Mac OSX, I just know it's based on the Unix/Linux kernel)

[marurun]

Hey, don't hate Mac OS X until you know it. Apathy and ignorance I'm OK with, but hate and ignorance is a bitch. I happen to like the OS even though I don't have any Apple machines. I've used them extensively. Apple's OS X is a fusion of NeXT and NetBSD. If you're going to hate the OS (and that's your right, don't let me stop you) at least know something about it and base your hatred on something concrete. And yes, for Windows shares and Windows sharing it uses Samba.

To clarify your explanation of Samba, the Windows file sharing protocol is Server Message Block, or SMB. Samba basically is an open source/free implementation of SMB sharing protocols. It's actually a pretty crappy way to share files, but since Windows dominates the market, everyone does things Microsoft's way.