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Omnutia

Member

Registered: 2007-08-05

Posts: 12

Home server acting as a switch?

I am planning to make a home server to keep in my bedroom and wanted to have it also act as a switch. Question: While it is acting as a switch for other computers can it still connect to the network itself? If so, how?

cactus

Taco Eater

From: t͈̫̹ͨa͖͕͎̱͈ͨ͆ć̥̖̝o̫̫̼s͈̭̱̞͍̃!̰

Registered: 2004-05-25

Posts: 4,622

Website

Re: Home server acting as a switch?

sure.
you just bridge the interfaces, and assign an ip to one of the bridges. Look up interface bridging documentation on google or something.
you can even use ebtables for broadcast mac policy stuff.

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"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

RedShift

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2004-07-16

Posts: 230

Re: Home server acting as a switch?

A switch is essentially a bridge with lots of ports.

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:?

Omnutia

Member

Registered: 2007-08-05

Posts: 12

Re: Home server acting as a switch?

Thanks for the advice. One more question: The machine I'm going to be using is an old system with a ~800mhz processor. If I'm not transferring massive files will there be that much of a performance hit to the processor?

cactus

Taco Eater

From: t͈̫̹ͨa͖͕͎̱͈ͨ͆ć̥̖̝o̫̫̼s͈̭̱̞͍̃!̰

Registered: 2004-05-25

Posts: 4,622

Website

Re: Home server acting as a switch?

No. It shouldn't be much of a hit (depending on the quality of the network cards).
Layer two bridging is pretty much dump and spew. So the network card driver is really the workhorse in your scenario. If you have decent intel cards, no problem. If you have cheapo realtek cards, you might see some cpu load out of it, but probably not a whole lot.
If you are doing any layer 3 routing (ospf, rip) then it might have a little extra load, but I doubt you will find it at all problematic in even a moderately sized LAN.

I would be interested to see how much overhead you do get.
Please post any results you find.

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"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍

Omnutia

Member

Registered: 2007-08-05

Posts: 12

Re: Home server acting as a switch?

Just got it working. If I am allowed I'd like to add an entry to the Wiki detailing the process. No noticeable performance while browsing the web but I'll have to stress test this properly later.

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Home server acting as a switch?

It's a wiki - everyone's allowed.

Have fun.