[SunRescue] LAN Commmunication (was Sparc 10 cover plates)

[Bjrn Ramqvist]

paul pries wrote:
> 
> > I don't think so...we have a small network 16 systems here on Two SMC Hubs
> > and we get local trafic at 8.8 - 9.1 Mbit/sec on ordenary 10Mb/s network.
> 
> The worst case I've ever seen is a saturation
> point of 3.8 Mbit/s. But
> then again, this is exceptional. Lots of koax
> segments, mulitport
> repeaters, some hubs with their TP segments. No
> switching at all, just
> one logical segment with a lot of traffic...
> No one had ever thought of doing a proper design,
> no one had thought
> of traffic patterns or what protocols they had
> running.
> It really was a mess.

OK.
"background" traffic increase when the amount of hosts increase.
But, imagine in a switched LAN with multiple repeaters, switches,
bridges, mediaconverters and all such things, they can't get rid of
"all" traffic either, no?

I was just thinking of when I was at one of our customers site, where
they have hosts in the amount of "thousands". They sure is connecting
through switches, but what I came to notice was that it was a huge
amount of broadcast packets?
I mean, imagine a WinNT network where EVERY machine thinks it needs to
know EXACTLY where every machine is, it's status, it's wifes name, it's
social security number, the color of your dogs eyes and so on - this
must be a problem. Just "keeping up" the LAN is almost rendering itself
useless.

You can't exactly add just more switches and increase segements, cause
you'd still have these broadcasts running through to every segment
available everywhere, right?

Not that we are talking much bandwidth or huge packets, but a sum of
packets fairly spread, just enough to make a collision sound like a
normal everyday happening.
I just hate it when I plug in a freshly installed server, not even
booted, into a switch and see the blinkenlichts starts to glow - without
even having any traffic.


	/Regards, Bjorn