On 18 Oct 99, at 0:50, Chan Fan Chong wrote:

> I am new in network design and implementation. Pls give
> advise/suggestion on the layout given shown below:
>
> analog
> phone line 1 ==================         --------------
> -------------[ D-link         ]  ------>|   16 port  |
> -------------[Internet Server ]         |   switch   |----------> 16 PC
> phone line 2 ==================         |------------|
>
> Hardware:
>   1 D-link DP-602 Internet Server ( 1 auto-sensing 10/100 Mbps
>                   LAN port)
>   1 3Com Office Connect Switch 1600 (16 10/100 Mbps auto-sensing
>                    ports)
>   16 celeron-base PC

  Hold on a sec.  You've got 17 devices plugged into a switch with 16
ports.  Unless the switch also has some kind of "uplink" port AND the
Internet server has some way of plugging into it, this isn't going to
work.
  [Although I cannot find details of a 16-port switch in 3com's
OfficeConnect line, other devices in this line do not seem to have
uplink ports, and in any case the DP-602 connets via 10/100 Ethernet.
I'm about 86% certain that it's going to count against the total of
16 ports on the switch.
  An alternative you might consider is to go with a 4-port switch;
plug the DP-602 into one port and a couple of 9-port (8 + uplink)
hubs into other ports, or two 8s and a 4 without uplink ports.]

> Question 1 : if at any one time, 10 pc are playing network game.
> The rest is use to browse the internet. Will the 6 PC that browse
> the internet show sign of slow download of web page.

  A switch is like a multi-port bridge.  If you had six of the PCs on
one side of a network bridge and ten on the other, and no session
traffic across the bridge, then only broadcasts would cross.  Same
thing here; odds are that the game produces little broadcast traffic,
so impact should be minimal.  [If the switch supports VLANs, and if
it makes sense to split your network into two, you can reduce this
impact even further....]

David G

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