Looking for a router

airbornflght

Ok. My fraternity has a partial T1 connection (I believe), coming into a router and then into the switches. There around 60 guys connected at one time plus anyone that is doing xbox live and the such.

The router right now doesn't hand the load very well. It drops connections, mainly the xbox's, whenever the load gets to be too much. I will have more details in a little bit when I get up into the actual 'internet room'. I haven't been up there so I'm just going off of what I've been told.

Can anyone recommend me a router? They want to spend around $100, but I told them it'd probably cost around $300. I was thinking an entry level cisco router, but I really don't know what my options are.

kryyst

for $100 they can get a home router, which isn't very well suited for 60 connections. Though it should work as they are technically capable of handling more.

I would suggest getting something beefier. The problem is beefier starts around $300 and goes up from there. As for which router specifically, if you only need a 1 - 1 router (1 wan port 1 lan port) then something in the Cisco 800 series should service your needs rather well, though still not cheaply.

Just know that setting one up isn't necessarily as easy as setting up your home linksys one. Most come with a minimal configuration and you have to configure your routing tables and everything.

Also if you are on a partial T1 depending on how that connects you may have other complications as well. Before you go shopping I'd take a look at what's going on and see if there is a real problem that needs replacing. In a network that large, that's hacked together you could be suffering from loops, conflicting IP's packet saturation etc..etc..etc...

airbornflght

Sounds like I should buy a book and start reading. I've read a couple books but have little experience with the low level side of networking.

As far as I know they only have one subnet with no DMZ, so that would just require a 1-1 router, correct? And will these routers still act as a DHCP server, or am I stepping into the realm where separate components are required? I can get windows server 2003 for free but I've never really used it. I know it can handle DHCP, but doesn't it require a domain controller?

Any recommended reading?

Leonardo

Couldn't he just daisy chain two or three inexpensive switches to the router?

Laugh if you want - I'm definitely not a networking guru.

GrayFox

If your running a T1 you have big expensive ATM equipment.

If you have a cable or dsl connection and think its a T1 (most likely scenario)

Just run a pc with ipcop as a router. If you really want to go with a underpowered solution the wrt54GL (Around $90usd) powered by dd-wrt is the best your going to get for under $400usd (excluding the best solution of turning your pc into a linux router/firewall)

I run IPCOP on my homenetwork its a bit less powerful then a solution like shorewall (Iptables made easy) but far more powerful then smoothwall (Crippled ipcop).

Its the best solution for what you want to do.


edit: Btw assuming all the pc/xboxs are runing xp sp2/vista/xbox os your maximum connections should be around 3840 (limit 64 per pc). DD-WRT can do up to 4096 before it hits dies (assuming you cranked max connections to max), most dlinks can do 53 before they get pwned, ipcop can in theory do 65000. (The limit of tcp/ip on kernel 2.4)

kryyst

By 1 to 1 I mean it has 1 WAN port and 1 LAN port, it's a router and not a combined router/switch like most standard home systems are where you have 4 - 8 LAN ports. The router can still handle multiple subnets, DMZ's and anything else it's just a 1 - 1 physical connection from outside to inside. If you want to do any physical network segmenting you'd need a small (4 - 8 port) managed switch off the Router's LAN port which would then connect the various dumb switches for everything else. Lost yet?

The router can act as your DHCP host/gateway or you could setup a seperate domain controller that hands out DHCP address as well as file serving, mail whatever. Personally though for what you are doing I'd let the router hand out the Address and not throw a domain controller into it unless you really need it. If you want some NAS (network attached storage) any machine, linux or windows can handle that.

Now for trouble shooting it, that can be a long process. The long way is to find where it's failing. Which means shutting down the network connecting one machine and see if the network is dropping. Then add another, and another etc....

If you have a decent router, you may be able to check the logs and see if the bandwidth is spiking and what is causing it to spike (ie what type of traffic) and that may also help. But it's still just a mater of some hard work. It gets easier if it's just a handful of machines that are going down or if it's going down randomly. That means that you have a bad cable, bad nic or too much traffic.

If it's going down all at once then you either have an overworked router or your network, in general can't handle the load. This is all assuming that the problem is on your end of that connection and not something wrong with the pipe coming into your house.

As for reading material. Check out 'Networking for Dummies' It's a fantastic guide that really gets down to the hands on approach and covers the basics really well. It won't teach you how to program a Cisco router but it will give you a great foundation.

kryyst

Leonardo wrote:

Couldn't he just daisy chain two or three inexpensive switches to the router?

Laugh if you want - I'm definitely not a networking guru.

Absolutely, which is what's probably setup now. It'll also work, until something goes wrong and then everyone potentially suffers.

Oh one thing I forgot to add any new equipment you get get 10/100/1000 based devices even if not a single person in your building uses giga bit connections. They have a larger backplane, which means they are vastly more efficient at handling network load. Plus now the cost between 10/100 and 10/100/1000 is rather minor compared to a couple years ago.

airbornflght

I thought you put different sub nets on different lan ports on the router? From the sounds of it I better start reading, a lot.

kryyst

Nope, you don't do that. You may be thinking of Vlan's which you could do that, but not really with subnets. Subnets don't care where they are plugged into for the most part. They just handle what network you are on and which other networks you can talk to.

But in your case you only need a 255.255.255.0 subnet as you have less then 254 devices and wouldn't gain anything by splitting it up into separate networks.

GrayFox

kryyst wrote:

Nope, you don't do that. You may be thinking of Vlan's which you could do that, but not really with subnets. Subnets don't care where they are plugged into for the most part. They just handle what network you are on and which other networks you can talk to.

But in your case you only need a 255.255.255.0 subnet as you have less then 254 devices and wouldn't gain anything by splitting it up into separate networks.

Well if hes hosting servers and setups acl's he can increase security by putting the servers on there own network.

RWB

I don't think he's looking for anything crazy guys, just something simple. If he were serious bout the network he'd be spending $1000's on equipment to do it properly instead of just $100.

But to handle the load, you'll really need a server type of setup instead of some rinkydink consumer grade router that really can't even handle 30 people very well. Especially since you're all in college, I'd bet you got people doing P2P and **** that is going to hammer to hell out of whatever is running.

You're going to need a server, running IP cop or some other flavor to serve the internet. Sounds like you already have the switches and cabling done. So the server will simply have a WAN port and a LAN port, plug the switch(s) in and that should do the trick. You might wanna see about maybe donations of parts from others in the frat to build the server. You could probably get away with spending no money that way.

It's ghetto, but it should work for the money you're willing to spend.

airbornflght

Yeh, all the cabling is ran, and the switches are there. Still haven't seen the stuff, and damn, typing is hard after a party. First time and it was amazing. I am really happy right now . But yeh, kids here are running p2p, xbox and all kinds of crap. The router gets hammered. Plain and simple.

I am thinking it is a partial t1 line bcause they said that it was $750 a month. wtf? That should get at least a full t1 line I thought. I'd like to get these guys done right, but first I have to get serious and figure out whatk ind of budget they have for this. I'm guess it needs to be done as efficiently as possible. i.e. spend as little as possible. I'm hoping they already have some nice switches in place.

How much do cisco switches run, and how do you ge them? Do you have to buy them directly from cisco? It seems that unless you go used they aren't exactly readily available.

RWB

airbornflght wrote:

Yeh, all the cabling is ran, and the switches are there. Still haven't seen the stuff, and damn, typing is hard after a party. First time and it was amazing. I am really happy right now . But yeh, kids here are running p2p, xbox and all kinds of crap. The router gets hammered. Plain and simple.

I am thinking it is a partial t1 line bcause they said that it was $750 a month. wtf? That should get at least a full t1 line I thought. I'd like to get these guys done right, but first I have to get serious and figure out whatk ind of budget they have for this. I'm guess it needs to be done as efficiently as possible. i.e. spend as little as possible. I'm hoping they already have some nice switches in place.

How much do cisco switches run, and how do you ge them? Do you have to buy them directly from cisco? It seems that unless you go used they aren't exactly readily available.

T1 lines can vary within a couple hundred $ around the $300 mark. Depends on contract and with whom you're getting service from.

airbornflght

Download Speed: 3205 kbps (400.6KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 613 kbps (76.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

Just ran this test at speakeasy. It doesn't look like fractional t1 or full t1, but hell. They are paying $750 a month. a business class dsl service could do that couldn't it?

I'm going to bed

rapture

DSL could do that easily and you wouldnt pay $750 a month for it.

My home DSL that I pay £24 a month for is currently doing
6521.67 Kbps down
1051.29 Kbps up

Seriously, if your college is using a T1 you wont be picking up a router from walmart for $100.

But to handle the load, you'll really need a server type of setup instead of some rinkydink consumer grade router that really can't even handle 30 people very well.[/quote
What are you talking about D:

Leonardo

Good observation, Rapture. Andy, take a look through the Internet Speed thread. Ordinary cable or DSL (even older generation) is the speed you are posting.

GrayFox

A T1 is typicly 1.5 megabits down/1.5 megabits up with exactly 45ms latency to the isp.

I bet you have cable.


Also if theres p2p users your going to want something more powerful then ipcop... Ipcop will do the job but if theres any mac or linux torrent users your going to need ram ... lots and lots of ram to track all the connections they will make. (Theres no software limit in the tcpip stack on how many connections linux/os X can do).


edit: Also if you don't have equipment like this image below your not running on a t1.


edit: if your running a cisco ipx or a cisco router its just a little dsu/csu module that goes inside the unit... unless its older equipment.

airbornflght

Well, its definitely a linksys router, because I went to http://xxx.xxx.xxx (my dhcp server) and I got this

Enter username and password for "Linksys BEFSR41/BEFSR11/BEFSRU31" at http://xxx.xxx.xxx.

Someone changed the default server address from 192.168.1.1 that these things normally default too, and the password too. Haven't found a way to break into it or crack the password either. But I've talked to everyone and nobody has any idea on the username or password. So I can't even check the load or any diagnostics that it might provide me.

When I get up there I'm going to do a hard reset and hope there aren't any important settings.

And I was fairly sure T1 was 1.5/1.5 and synced or whatever it is called. Something about the connection always being synced even if its not being utilized, I forget. But why else would they be paying $750 a month for that sub par service? I get 4000/500 at home from cable for $50 a month. If I got them on some business DSL for $150 a month or so then the money they save each month they could put towards buying some decent network equipment. Reallocation is nice if they will do it. I'm just a pledge but they seem to value my opinion.

kryyst

If you do a factory reset on the router, it'll reset everything. But you'll need to do that if you want to start troubleshooting.

GrayFox

airbornflght wrote:

Well, its definitely a linksys router, because I went to http://xxx.xxx.xxx (my dhcp server) and I got this

Someone changed the default server address from 192.168.1.1 that these things normally default too, and the password too. Haven't found a way to break into it or crack the password either. But I've talked to everyone and nobody has any idea on the username or password. So I can't even check the load or any diagnostics that it might provide me.

When I get up there I'm going to do a hard reset and hope there aren't any important settings.

And I was fairly sure T1 was 1.5/1.5 and synced or whatever it is called. Something about the connection always being synced even if its not being utilized, I forget. But why else would they be paying $750 a month for that sub par service? I get 4000/500 at home from cable for $50 a month. If I got them on some business DSL for $150 a month or so then the money they save each month they could put towards buying some decent network equipment. Reallocation is nice if they will do it. I'm just a pledge but they seem to value my opinion.

Thats pathetic that router is intended for a family of 4.

Also a T1 will always be consistently exactly the same speed and same latency. nomater how much anyone else on the isp's network is hammering it (Like dsl a T1 isn't shared, However with dsl/cable your ping will be different to your isp by a few ms every time you check.)

The real selling points with a T1 is that there not touching your traffic and throttling it down, There not giving you any bandwidth cap per month, And it will always be consistenly fast.

Also the owner of it falls under the category of an isp and there not liable for any illegal traffic on there network (Such as illegal use of p2p to download music,movies,ect) but they are required to be able to turn over usage logs if the riaa or government asks them to... but with there current setup there probably screwed if this happens since there not properly equipped to monitor there users.

airbornflght

What would happen if we were incapable of producing logs? Are we required by law to do so, or just required to produce them if we have them.

GrayFox

airbornflght wrote:

What would happen if we were incapable of producing logs? Are we required by law to do so, or just required to produce them if we have them.

Well I know my school has to be able to turn over logs they made it very clear to us during the tour through the i.t. department.

The isp my school has is American so even if we pirate music (This is legal in canada) we can get in trouble with the riaa. The school said they would get massive lawsuits if they didn't produce logs to American authority's. They also warned us all not to pirate music,movies, and software.

airbornflght

How much would I be looking to spend on a setup like this:

1 - Decent router with the bottom end to handle ~80 computers
4 - 24 port gigabit switches
3 - Wireless G (N?) access points


I was looking online, and it seems that we should be able to get a bonded 3/3 T1 connection for around $750 a month.

Would it be more beneficial to get two individual T1 lines, or one bonded T1 line? I'm sure it depends on the application. But giving these two scenarios, which would you choose for each.

• up to 80 users doing both general browsing and online gaming
• the previous and a web server on its own vlan

I'm trying to come up with a vision to get our house ready. We really don't have any 'geeks' in the house aside from me. I'd also like to get a workgroup printer on the network too.

GrayFox

The best router for your setup would probably be a ipcop box you will run out of money too fast with any other setup and ipcop doesn't require much learning. (Most of the configuration is done via a web interface.

A p2 1ghz or slow p4 with 512-1GB of ram should do the job.


For switches netgear pro if you want to spend money.

If you want to go wifi with this many users you will need to go radius with wpa or wpa2 for authentication. If you go this route you will also need a dedicated server running some sort of ldap (Open ldap if you run linux, active directory on windows).

That way each user gets there own user name and password to your wireless network.

Also with gigabit you will notice a two file sharing users have the power to slow down the entire network.


The best bet would be to use a gigabit switch as the backbone and branch off it to 10/100 switches that have gigabit uplinks.

You should also go with a managed switch you can set things like QOS on them and take some load off the routers. (Other wise you would have to do this on the router and bit torrent users make qos hammer the cpu.)


Ipcop is also immune to arp cache poisoning so you don't have to worry about man in the middle attacks on your own network.