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  1. contrarian rallynavvie's Avatar
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    Sep 2002
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    I have two workstations at work which need to have GbE infrastructure between them. One is a command station for a large printing machine and the other is its RIP station. Files that need to be printed are shared on the company network and accessed from the RIP station which are rendered out to the native format the printer uses. These "ripped" files are huge, often 4-5GB, in size. Currently both machines are on the company network which is just 100Mb infrastructure, but the RIP station has two GbE NICs and the printer station has a single GbE NIC. Both are running XP Pro.

    Which would be a better solution: a crossover cable between the two or setting up the supplied GbE switch that came with the system?

    I had heard there were issues with using a crossover for peer-to-peer networks with GbE networks but obviously this is the simplest measure to implement. The system came with a nice GbE switch, however we cannot implement it as part of our company network as it doesn't conform to their "approved devices" list (even though most of our machines are GbE-capable and would benefit greatly from the faster infrastructure). However I can set up the switch between only the two machines in question to raise their speeds to gigabit since it wouldn't actually be part of the company network, just a link between the two machines.

    And once the connection is established how would I set up simple file sharing between the two making certain that the printer station is completely isolated from the rest of the network (and thus any contact to the internet)? If I set up with the switch between them it should be easier for me to set up the network between them, but if I use the crossover it may be a little more involved.
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  2. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Best to ask your sys admin at work but individual computers can have many networks active.

    Bridging networks is another issue.


    PS: Warning ... opening your work network to a security hole can get you fired.
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  3. contrarian rallynavvie's Avatar
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    If I get our systems administrators involved nothing will ever get done. I take the initiative when I need to. There really would never be a security hole because no matter what both machines would be on the location's LAN and behind the same firewalls as the rest of the systems. The problem lies in the administrator's extreme loathing of adding "unsupported" hardware. Understandably they'd be responsible if any issues were to come of it since either our L1 or L2 support folks wouldn't really have the training for it. However I know it's just a switch, just like the other switches in our network closet, and operates on the same principles. In fact if it were a Dell GbE switch I'd probably have just swapped out that LAN's switch entirely.

    The issue with keeping the printer station seperate and isolated from the internet is more of an internal management issue. We (I) don't want anyone using that machine for surfing the net and/or downloading/installing anything on it since it is basically built in to that $350k printer. Since it would be behind the company firewall AND have Norton like all our other machines I'm not worried about any sort of outside risk to that machine.

    I think by default when you have two networks on a single machine that neither sees the other from any other machine unless you "bridge" those network adapters. That issue is less of a worry than the other of bridging with a crossover or just setting up that switch between the workstations somewhere. I can't put the switch in with the rest of the network stuff since I'm sure my superiors would not appreciate that much, but if I were to set it up on its own next to the RIP station they'd never even notice.

    I love the RIP station that came with it though. It's easily the fastest machine at any of our locations. It has two 3.4 GHz Nocona Xeons, 2GB of ECC memory, a PCI-E Quadro video card, dual onboard GbE (though not Intel CSA controllers), and a killer SCSI RAID setup (striped across three volumes and mirrored on the same). Only drawback is its a Supermicro board which I don't really care for.
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