On Tue, 30 Sep 2003, Otto Haliburton wrote: > Again the problem is not the 50 ip addresses, but how they are connected. > If they are all in the same area you have the problem of collisions and the > problem of increased traffic due to updating the routing tables for all 50 > nodes. Where as if you have smaller areas, one computer will be arbitrated > as the router in each area and the collisions will be less because of the > smaller areas. Having many computers in the same LAN is always a problem > with Ethernet. If you have many computers in the same area then token ring > is better because of the reduction of the collisions, but token ring does > not solve the routing table problem.
This is not quite always the case. Ethernet's CSMA/CD (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection) was invented during a time when a hub or bus were the primary method of connection. Collision was indeed a problem then, and keeping the LAN small was a way to ensure network performance. However, these days, switches are much cheaper and are easily within the reach of most organizations. If your users are hooked up to a switch instead of a hub, you can ignore the "collisions problem", as it no longer exists. At that point, the limiting factors are the speed/RAM of the gateway and the speed/RAM of the switch. A good, short explanation can be found at http://www.duxcw.com/faq/network/hubsw.htm Ben -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
