Best lan Config?

[Mopardude]

Hello! Saw your the site mention on the show Tekzilla and I have found it pretty interesting so far. My sister's BF and myself host regular LAN parties at his house with around about 20 people showing up on average. With that many people we been obsessed with squeezing all we can out of our network. Our current configuration is a Linksys WRT54G router I think, with Tomato firmware. We than have Dell managed 15 port workgroup switch from which the file servers and game servers are plugged into along with about half of the gaming boxes. The other half is plugged into a cheap Dlink 15 port switch which is plugged into the dell switch as well. We aren't using any managing functions of the Dell switch and the linksys router is handling the DHCP. Seems like when we get to many people on the network there is little bugs that start occuring nothing major except some computers cannot see other computers on the network. It seems that more often than not the computers on the cheap Dlink switch are most effected but it has happen to computers on the Dell switch. As far as gaming is concerned it doesn't effect anything. It mainly disrupts sharing of files between people.

I been thinking of trying a different configuration where each switch comes off the router than connect another line from switch to switch. Than the File server is a Ubuntu box with 2 on board NICs, I was thinking of plugging 1 into each switch. Also I should point out this is a gigabit network except for the Linksys router with is 10/100. Would I be gaining anything by doing it this way or would I need to get into creating vlans or something crazy as far as configuration goes? I would be interested in any opinions people may have. Thanks in advanced.

 

[thiggins]

Uplinking each switch into the router would limit traffic between switches to 100 Mbps/sec. Don't think you want to do that.

You need to do some debugging to find out what your problem is, not just move things around. When a computer loses its ability to file share, you need to find out why. Start with trying to ping between the systems that are trying to share files.
Also see if you can mount the share using IP address instead of by network browsing.

One possible guess is that you may have multiple systems trying to be browse master. See How To: Tips for Fixing XP File and Printer sharing Tip 4.

 

[scotty]

So to clarify, gaming is working fine but people are having a hard time seeing shared files? Or are there other problems (i.e. dropping connections, lag)?

Since you're all on the same network to begin with, if you can see and play games fine, it's not a networking issue. If it's a file sharing issue, that's a windows/firewall/sharing thing. As a veteran LAN party goer, I'd be willing to bet this is the case. Your configuration sounds correct so I don't think the basic network is your problem. Your problem is going to be on the Windows side of things - people should have file and print sharing allowed on their firewalls (remember, BOTH windows' firewall and those provided by anti-virus programs, etc). People should also be on the same windows workgroup.

However, "browsing" networks in windows is slow and very painful. I've been to dozens of LAN parties and you'll spend all day tearing your hair out because one machine can't see another. Just assign your Ubuntu file server (and any other important machines) a static IP and have people access it directly (i.e. start - run - \\192.168.1.20). Don't rely on Windows' browsing capabilities unless you enjoy pain and torture.

Otherwise, no need to introduce VLAN's or other protocols on the network - this will just add another layer of headache and confusion, not to mention there's just no need for a network this small. Also, you mention connecting each switch into the router and also into each other - don't do this - this will cause a broadcast storm and will bring your network to its knees. You want to avoid loops in the cabling - each switch only needs to be connected to one other. Since you have a decent managed switch, think of it as your main switch and just make sure each other switch is connected into it, and that's it. If you introduce multiple paths to 1 destination, that will have the opposite desired effect. There's no need to have the switched connected directly to the router (it's just a 4 port switch, ultimately).

 

[Mopardude]

Oh sorry I jumbled my thoughts when I was typing them out in my first post. I was considering the hardware reconfiguration to work out some speed and performance issues the Dlink switch seems to have. I was thinking I could use the Dell switch in managed mode along with the router to come up with something that avoided the looping effect. If you say it can't be done than I won't waste time researching it further. The Dell switch is a gem of a switch and we dished out a lot of money for it when we first started getting into LAN parties. The Dlink was something cheap we picked to deal with the fact we out grew the Dell to fast. We been thinking about getting rid of the Dlink and upgrading to a better one, I was just hoping a better config would help.

As for some computers not seeing each other. It is definitely some sort of nameserver or DNS issue. On the Ubuntu fileserver I have a DNS server running. Basically it is setup to do 2 things, it is setup to point at the DNS servers of the ISP, and it points www.lan.lan to the HTTP server on the ubuntu box. We prefer the HTTP way of sharing the important files to everyone than just giving them access to an open ftp or file share. As you can provide instruction on what to do with the files instead of having to tell each person at the lan what to do with the file. The linksys router is than setup to point and the ubuntu box for for all DNS. Like said before when the network gets to many people on it something seems to puke out. As www.lan.lan will not resolve and you cannot manually mount any network share by name. You are right thought you can access everything if you know the ip of the computer you wish to access. The weird thing is thought even though internal network resolving seems to fail for these people they can get to anywhere on the internet they want. It is almost like when you do a fresh install of win xp or later and it won't let you browse anywhere on the network till you run the little network setup wizzard. Like I said it seems to start with people on the Dlink switch who show up later in the night. Any ideas what to check for?

 

[scotty]

So it sounds like it's just DNS. If they were to access the web server by IP in their browser (i.e. http://192.168.1.20) - I'm assuming it would work and there's no other connectivity issues at play. Correct?

I would confirm that your DHCP server is dishing out the proper DNS server address (the Ubuntu box) to everyone by doing an ipconfig -all on the machines. If everyone is pointing to the Ubuntu DNS server, it would be a matter of confirming that the DNS service has the proper records and zones in place in order to properly resolve your names. I'm no expert on Ubuntu hosted DNS though, but that would be where I would look. If people can get on the internet, your pointers are probably working, but internal is fuggled. DNS can be tricky to learn and manage.

 

[Mopardude]

So it sounds like it's just DNS. If they were to access the web server by IP in their browser (i.e. http://192.168.1.20) - I'm assuming it would work and there's no other connectivity issues at play. Correct?

I would confirm that your DHCP server is dishing out the proper DNS server address (the Ubuntu box) to everyone by doing an ipconfig -all on the machines. If everyone is pointing to the Ubuntu DNS server, it would be a matter of confirming that the DNS service has the proper records and zones in place in order to properly resolve your names. I'm no expert on Ubuntu hosted DNS though, but that would be where I would look. If people can get on the internet, your pointers are probably working, but internal is fuggled. DNS can be tricky to learn and manage.

You are correct! We have tried ipconfig -all and everything seems normal. My question is if it is a server issues why does it only effect certain people? Also when the LAN party starts to die down, people who had issues can finally see everything? The ubuntu DNS server should have nothing to do with windows computers not being able to seeing other windows boxes by name, right? Something I have been pondering and maybe someone here would know, is there any limitation to the amount of computers a Linksys router can server to? Does it have the processor power and memory capable to do what we are asking of it?

 

[scotty]

I'm no expert on the technical ins and outs of the Windows browsing service, but I don't think it uses DNS to any extent. I think the 'slow browsing' issue is exclusive from the other DNS issue you're having. I've been to LAN parties where being able to see certain machines takes ages. I wouldn't be surprised if the service just gets bogged down once you start to get so many people (there's no quantitative basis behind that ).

As far as the capabilities of a Linksys go, I'm not sure what the hard limits are, but it in theory 30 or so people it should be able to handle. That being said, I've supported businesses of that size that run under a little WRT54G, and it has to be rebooted constantly. If you had a spare box sitting around, you could make a fun little project for yourself a build a PFsense router. It's a BSD based router, but it's easy to install, set up, and configure (all browser based, the same as any other router). It doesn't even need much hardware, any old P3 or P4 is plenty - all you really need is 1 or 2 spare NICs. This would be a much more industrious router with far more features than a little 54G. With this you would be able to open the door to managing bandwidth easily, amongst other things). All of the big LAN parties I've been to run behind a enterprise grade router of some kind.

 

[Mopardude]

I wouldn't be surprised if the service just gets bogged down once you start to get so many people (there's no quantitative basis behind that )

Well yea its Windows it is bound to bogg eventually! I don't think its a bogging issue thought. Normally when the service is bogged and you can't browse the network you can still type it in manually and find it right away or least that has always been my experience.

Well I was considering making a linux box to be a router but with the Tomato firmware installed on his linksys it added so many features to the router it never had before. Plus there is a few people who use the wireless. So it seemed kinda funny to me to have 2 routers on the network. Maybe I should go check to see if there is a forum for Tomato or even DDRT. The guys hacking and rewriting the firmwares for these routers, I would think should known what they can do.