help setup my network!

[MonsterEnergy]

Alright everyone, i've decided to rebuild my home network, and have quite a few questions before i start.
Also i'm open to suggestions if anyone has any =)

To start, i'm building a linux router, on a micro atx machine with two pci 10/100mb interfaces.

This will connect my modem to my local network via an 8 port gigabit netgear switch.

Connected to the switch will be a linksys wrt54g wireless router.

Also on the switch will be a home built NAS box. It will be a full-atx, a8n-sli box,
with onboard four 3.0gb sata ports, and a 4x pci-e rocketraid 4 port sata interface.
The a8n-sli has onboard nforce4 gigabit, but I opted to add in two 1x pci-e gigabit adapters.

Both adapters will be connected to the 8 port gigabit switch.

The first question I have is how would be best to set all of this up while reducing any
bottlenecks that you all see?

I have pci-e gigabit adapters, because I read that the 33mhz limit on pci makes it impossible
to reach actual gigabit speeds. And seeing as this NAS box will constantly be accessed it seemed
logical to use pci-e.

There are hard drives in the NAS box, all are 7200rpm 320gb drives, two sets of them are mirrored
on the rocket raid controller, the other two are attached via the sata interface on the motherboard.

Basically im trying to reduce any possible limiting factors. Any insight is welcomed.

 

[RoBo]

Modem -> *nix router -> switch -> Linksys router used as access point.

Somehow I don't think you will fully use 1gb/s let alone the PCI bus.

 

[MonsterEnergy]

As I wrote that, you're by all means correct. I wrote it incorrectly though.

Modem -> wireless router (might as well just be an AP) -> switch
NAS box (wired) -> switch
Gaming rig (wired) -> switch
Media PC (wired) -> switch
Server (wired) -> switch

So I was intending to keep all the local traffic at gigabit, while everything that gets sent externally at whatever, since nothing on my end will ever limit it.

If I had visio installed this would be a lot easier, and i'm not going to embarass myself with paint.

With that clarified, what are your thoughts?

 

[MonsterEnergy]

daily bumperoo

 

[tacticus]

Well i have no fear in demonstrating my nonleet paint skills



you will need at least 2 nics in the router(1 Gbit and 1 10\100). 3 if you go for a dmz(do not connect this to your switch)

Alternativly you can put the wireless component on its own network.

this setup means that all local traffic can be at gbit speed
if you set the AP up on it's own nic on the server you will be able to run jumbo frames on your lan (provided the switch and everything else supports it.

 

[Concentric]

Also on the switch will be a home built NAS box. It will be a full-atx, a8n-sli box,
with onboard four 3.0gb sata ports, and a 4x pci-e rocketraid 4 port sata interface.
The a8n-sli has onboard nforce4 gigabit, but I opted to add in two 1x pci-e gigabit adapters.

Both adapters will be connected to the 8 port gigabit switch.

This looks to me like you're trying to use two NICs with link aggregation to give you more bandwidth, which isn't supported by what i assume is a GS108 switch.

 

[RoBo]

This looks to me like you're trying to use two NICs with link aggregation to give you more bandwidth, which isn't supported by what i assume is a GS108 switch.

Also, there is no way a hard drive can max out a 1gb/s connection, you would need at least a RAID 0 with many drives or multiple hard drives being accessed at the same time.

 

[MonsterEnergy]

Tacticus thank you for that picture.. it really is a modern day picasso.

Yeah, that is just how my network is laid out. The computer I was describing does have multiple hard drives, like eight.

So if someone could help me get as close to actual gigabit speeds that would be quite helpful.

Also, why does one of the cards in the router need to be gigabit? Assuming I have a switch that can handle gigabit and 100mb speeds, shouldnt it not matter? Its not like im going to have anything over 10mbs leaving my network.

and @ Concentric, yes that was what I intended to do, but also assumed it really wasnt possible (for cheap). Thanks

Thanks again

 

[RoBo]

1 hard drive will not reach anywhere near GB speeds. You will need multiple hard drives being accessed from different computers on your network or a RAID array which will bring it's own problems.

If using a network like the [SIZE=-1]1337 paint one then you will not need a GB router.
[/SIZE]

 

[MonsterEnergy]

I will have multiple hard drives being accessed, on the same computer, with different controllers

 

[RoBo]

I will have multiple hard drives being accessed, on the same computer, with different controllers

At the same time?

 

[MonsterEnergy]

Well one of them is accessed constantly, and another is accessed several times a day. So yes, at the same time. I have a box which downloads torrents and such, and saves it directly to the nas's drives, and my mythtv box copies all of its recently recorded programs over, and i watch movies off it fairly often