The office moved. The hodgepodge of long cable runs going from a central switch to a bunch of hubs and switches has been replaced by patch panels and a set of switches with higher density. And a lot of crappy ancient machines just went away. But throw away the old hubs and switches? Hell no, they might be useful.
Right.
So until they become useful, how to use them? Answer: Plug them all together to demonstrate that they still work. Then close the loop, and fire off one packet into the mix. "Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please. " Ok, so it was an arp who-has instead of a ping, but the point stands. The packet was sent from my laptop to the hub, which sent it out to the two other active ports, which went to those switches/hubs other ports, etc... Yay!
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Bunch of Netgears, mostly 8-port 10/100mbps hubs |
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More Netgears, 10/100mbps, 8, 16, and 24 port hubs. Maybe a switch, too. |
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Even more Netgears. 10/100mpbs, 8, 16, and 24 port hubs and switches. As much crap as people give Netgear equipment, these beasts have held up very well. Of course, it's not like I'm asking them to do anything hard. |
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Mix of netgear, Bay, Nortel, and other crap. A couple aren't plugged into the loop because, although they power on, the couple ports I tried didn't actually pass packets. FAIL. |
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How'd that SMC get in there? Oh well, we must've bought all the Netgears from the store and needed more. Plus some more Nortel. Plus some NFR-branded thing from a partnering deal from maybe 1999 that never happened. Maybe it never happened because they didn't pass packets. Or maybe that's just a current feature. |
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Top-down shot of rack Alpha |
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Top-down shot of rack Bravo |
Admittedly there are a number of hubs that could be added to the mix. I just need to find the power supplies for them. That's much easier said than done.
So how was the throughput? With 38 10/100 hubs/switches between me and a host, pings took almost one second, round-trip. Not bad, considering. Considering.