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jokeyxeroOffline
Location: Woodstock, GA
25 Post subject: DHCP Server / Router  PostPosted: Jan 09, 2012 - 08:55 PM
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It would be awesome if club would purchase a DHCP Server that could actually handle the LAN's load. The Linqsys WRT54G (or whatever it is) always crashes after one of two conditions: 1) more than ~5 wireless clients 2) more than ~15 wired clients.

I think at the last TL, someone went home and got a version of the same box running Linux (DD-WRT?) instead of whatever OS it runs by default. That seemed to fix the >15 client stability problems.

Ideally, a managed gigabit 48+ port switch with a DHCP module would be an awesome backbone, but those can get costly. (Fundraiser time?)

A second topic is internet routing. I'm not sure if it's the school's network or the router that fails with this. At previous TLs we could only get 2 people at a time on Internet before the entire network would dying on random people for random periods of time. At the last one we seemed to be able to get over 10 clients before it started acting up. I don't remember if that was before or after we swapped out the router though. I do know that at the peak we had to disconnect from the AU network in order to keep our network up and running.

We should probably talk to OIT about this to see if it's us or them. If it's them then perhaps we can better understand why it has to be this way, or work toward something that gets everyone Internet and keeps OIT happy. If it's us, then I'm assuming the issue is with the capacity of the router since the switches should all handle 100% utilization without a problem.

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BanditOffline
Location: Madison Alabama
Post subject: RE: DHCP Server / Router  PostPosted: Jan 19, 2012 - 02:14 PM
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why not seperate DHCP and switching? 48 port unmanaged switches are a couple hundred and the DHCP could be handled by a cheep router. In total much cheaper than a total package.
 
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jokeyxeroOffline
Location: Woodstock, GA
Post subject: Re: RE: DHCP Server / Router  PostPosted: Jan 20, 2012 - 03:21 AM
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      Bandit wrote:
why not seperate DHCP and switching? 48 port unmanaged switches are a couple hundred and the DHCP could be handled by a cheep router. In total much cheaper than a total package.


That's the current setup. The DHCP server we were using couldn't handle more than about 15 people before it failed. That's why I suggested a better DHCP server or an all in one package.

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SatertekOffline
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Post subject:   PostPosted: Jan 21, 2012 - 01:51 AM
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Nevermind

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jokeyxeroOffline
Location: Woodstock, GA
Post subject:   PostPosted: Jan 21, 2012 - 03:08 AM
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I'm not sure if they still do it, but AU used to give clubs $1000 refund for a one time purchase. You just have to apply for it. However, you also have to have a bank account, which we recently closed (This is why we registered as a non-profit org and opened one in the first place actually, they refunded the money to get the switches and router we have now)

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Post subject:   PostPosted: Jan 24, 2012 - 04:21 PM
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Did not know that. Will talk to Lucky about this. Sounds like a good plan.
 
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Post subject:   PostPosted: Jan 24, 2012 - 09:34 PM
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You could run pf (or pfsense) on a fusion platform. It'd probably cost 150-200. Also, yeah, a managed switch is a bit overkill. Hell fusion is overkill but it's probably the cheapest/smallest you can get.

pf would give you lots of flexibility in QoS and throttling for the internet problems, and it wouldn't crash every 5 seconds like ddwrt.
 
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BanditOffline
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Post subject:   PostPosted: Jan 26, 2012 - 12:55 PM
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Why the hell do you need a computer for a DHCP server? Buy a hardware router and use that. Its got a bigger data backplane than any single nic card computer would.

I've never understood your computer solution Xero. Ran d-lan for years with zero issues just using a standard router hung off a switch.

BTW, you are just hanging the DHCP server off the switch as an auto-negotiating port, not as the uplink of a hard wired port right? Because that was an issue on older hardware, that would force every network packet through the router, as opposed to only through the switch. The ONLY thing a DHCP server should be doing is registering IP's on the network to computer names. Once a machine updates to the latest DHCP list the server wouldn't have a need to talk to it again until the timeout hits hours later.
 
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jokeyxeroOffline
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Post subject:   PostPosted: Jan 27, 2012 - 03:11 AM
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When did I suggest a computer?

I've only talked about appliances: a Linksys Router running default OS, a Linksys Router running DD-WRT (a Linux-based OS), a router that's designed for small-medium business instead of a home network, and a managed switch with a DHCP module. Any reference to "box" meant "network appliance".

The usual topology has been an extended star with the router in the middle. That is, router connecting up to 4 switches on the LAN ports, then each client being connected to the switches. To provide internet, the router is hooked into the building's network via the WAN port. The only alternate we tried is the router connected to a single switch, then the other switches branching off the main one.

We had 30+ computers a few times when I ran it, which was always the star config and never had general network problems. Though we never had an internet connection to use.

We started having the problems when we attempted to get that Linksys router to serve up internet so we started playing with different topologies. Nothing worked so we made the assumption that it must be the AU side of things screwing it up and stopped trying to provide internet. Then at the last one it was a bit better for a while after we used a better router (better here meaning, same WRT54G hardware but DD-WRT software), but in the end, it still decided it couldn't handle it (see OP). I'm not sure exactly what topology has been used at the last few because the tech officer has done a pretty good job of getting it all up and running without having to ask me, with the exception of the internet and some dead cables that we tried to diagnose together.

Edit: Ignore the next paragraph unless you have more input. Looks like the switches just didn't support [R]STP.

On a side note, at one point we tried running dual cables between our switches with the intent of doubling the switch-to-switch bandwidth and providing a redundant connection of a cable/port went bad (not likely to happen obviously). What happened instead was an infinite loop of transmissions between those two cables (lights blinking with no other cables connected to it) and no computers could see each other. Any ideas why that might have happened?

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