Building a (really cheap) Server

[Adcadet]

hey all -

here's the deal. My wife and I both like listening to our MP3s. I also use my school's Lectures Online system, so I often have a few GBs or more of lectures that I need to have available. I want to be able to access these on any maching in our appartment - two laptops, my desktop (in both Linux and WinXP), and my wife needs her MP3 collection.

I see two choices: let my wife's new computer be the server, or let her old computer running Linux act as the server. Either way, she'll probably keep the MP3s on her machine. Her old computer is a P2-400 with 384 MB of RAM, and her new maching is an Athlon XP 2500 with a WD 20000JB running WinXP.

At the most, I'll be playing a lecture off the network at 150 kbps and she'll be listening to an MP3 at 192 kpbs, and we'll both be downloading stuff off our cable connection at ~2 mpbs tops. Since the network is 100 baseT, I'm guessing this can all be served off of one maching with almost no performance hit. Is this correct?

 

[Mercutio]

Gods yes. You could move dozens of those little bitty MP3 streams around before you'd notice any difference.

 

[Adcadet]

but would she notice any difference if she's busy photoshopping off her JB Caviar while playing an MP3 and streaming a lecture to me?

 

[blakerwry]

Do you already have a router/gateway?

A pII is plenty for a file serving box as I've already shown and many others have said. It is also plenty to act as a file server in combination with performaing firewall/gateway functions and even internal/external web and FTP services.

 

[blakerwry]

but would she notice any difference if she's busy photoshopping off her JB Caviar while playing an MP3 and streaming a lecture to me?

She might, simply becasue photoshop will be writing to scratch and any other disk activity will interfear with that. It all depends on what she's working on and how complex it is. The CPU hit should be minor even at worst case (10-20%).

I'd use your pII as the file server if it has the space you need.

 

[Adcadet]

so I'm test streaming an MP3 from my wife's maching to my Dell Inspiron laptop. Surprize, surprize, it works.

In Windows Task Manager it lists the link speed as 400 Mbps - I thought I was on a 100bT network. My network utilization is 0.03%, which by my calculation means that I'm using about 120 kbps....and I'm streaming a 128 kbps MP3, so that's about right on. So why is my network listed as 400 Mbsp? My wife's computer lists 100 Mbsp.

 

[blakerwry]

sounds like a firewire net adapter

From what I've seen, task manager seperates different NIC's so you can see them individually, just like CPU usage. But if two connections were bridged then I don't know how it works. In any event I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[blakerwry]

btw, you can add columns to the network display in task manager, I like to add the incoming bytes/sec and outgoing bytes/sec.

 

[Adcadet]

could it be a GigaE adaptor? My router is only 100 bT....maybe the GigaE on 100bT somehow gives 400Mbps....and it really is 400 it would seem.

 

[blakerwry]

if the gig-e is negotiating at 100BaseT then task manager should only show 100Mbps as the max. Even for full duplex connections.

 

[Adcadet]

could the router be capable, though unlisted in the manual, of doing 400 if the adaptor can?

 

[blakerwry]

No. There's no standard for 400Mbps over ethrnet that I know of. There is firewire over cat5, but that is an entirely different story.