Network Help

Kairo

Oké…I’m in the process of building up a small home network (As soon as my new PC arrives ) of about 4 PCs, and there were a few things I was wondering about.

How would I go about using two networked PCs to pool their resources and processing power together to complete a certain task?

Is it possible to link two PCs together using their USB ports and some USB cable, or is some kind of special hub required?

What would be the best Ethernet cards and Switches/Hubs to use? Also, what is the difference between switch and hub?

Any help would be appreciated as I got a network project to do at the end of the year, and so far they’ve taught us nothing of any value

TacT

www.pctechguide.com
www.howstuffworks.com
www.whatis.com
www.usb.org

I believe you are looking for a mobo that supports dual cpu's....

not sure about the usb........

I'd go with 3com/realtek for the nic......

You wouldn't need a switch for a network of that size unless one or more of the com's is a considerable distance away from each other as a switch (also known as a repeater) is used to boost the signal, a hub gives you the ports to connect your pc's together to form the network.

If your doing a course in networking you might want to read up at www.learntosubnet.com also do a search for network+ and see what you come up with, btw if your doing a course in networking and you don't know the differences between these things then I suggest you start to use the internet for educational purposes

Kairo

Originally posted by tactical anni

I believe you are looking for a mobo that supports dual cpu's....

Not at all.

What I said was that I was gonna have two PCs that were networked together to complete the same task. I don't want two CPUs on the same motherboard.

Gavin

I believe you are looking for a mobo that supports dual cpu's....

EH ? he doesn't say that at all

You wouldn't need a switch for a network of that size unless one or more of the com's is a considerable distance away from each other as a switch (also known as a repeater) is used to boost the signal, a hub gives you the ports to connect your pc's together to form the network.

Not quite correct... A Switch keps a record of the mac address of the network cards plugged into it's ports. It is able to shunt the traffic from one card straight to the other then and does not broadcast it to every port like a hub does...

If your doing a course in networking you might want to read up at www.learntosubnet.com also do a search for network+ and see what you come up with, btw if your doing a course in networking and you don't know the differences between these things then I suggest you start to use the internet for educational purposes

Yea.. I think someone should be using it for learning purposes alright....

As regards the original questions.

Sharing the machines process power means you will have to create a cluster. There are a few types, the one I am familiarish with is beowulf clusters ( runs on linux.. don't know of any windows cluster software ). Have a google for it..

You can get USB connections to connect pc's... but that's all I know about it. Again a google will probably ind some info.. I'd tend to avoid it though, and just stick with regular network cards and a hub.

3com tend to be the best alright( 'part from cisco of course).. bit expensive though.

Gav

ps the link on the page at the top of the forum has info on it..