[ale] Networking RedHat/Win98

[Jeff Hubbs]

Mikes:

You can get by with something less than one of those "out-of-the-box network
kits."  If you think you are going to have two and only two machines for a
while, you can slip Ethernet cards in both machines and use a crossover cable
between them in lieu of a hub or switch.  Use nice, popular,
been-around-for-a-while cards that you know RH6.0 can deal with easily.

If you use a crossover cable, you can enable duplex operation on both ends if
the respective drivers allow it (use an autodetect setting if available).  When
I did much the same thing (Win95 instead of Win98, though), nothing worked until
I explicitly disabled MULTICAST via ifconfig on the Linux system's eth0.  I made
a crossover cable that runs almost the length of our apartment and the Linux
machine is safely ensconced in the spare (read: storage) bedroom.

Naturally, you are going to want to get a hub or switch if you plan to do a
third system.  Alternatively, you can use Ethernet cards that will do Thinwire
and have pretty much as many machines as you want hanging off your backbone.
Downsides:  needing to shut the network down to add/remove systems from the
backbone; cabling faults driving you nuts.  I just recently read about a 32-node
cluster that utilized Thinwire to keep the costs down.

I just looked at a Computime ad - 5-port hub for $19, used combo Ethernet cards
(I think "combo" indicates a BNC jack for Thinwire) for $7 (ISA) and $9 (PCI),
10' TP cables for $10 - sheesh, that's not bad at all, nothing like the "old
days" of two years ago.

Mike Nolan wrote:

> Mike Bryant wrote:
> >I have just finished building a Linux box and am now ready to attempt
> >networking it and my Win98 machine.  I can read the HOW-TOs, etc. to figure
> >what I need to do to get it running(hopefully), but am wondering if anyone
> >can give me guidance on what out-of-the-box network kits will work with
> >RH...
> >
> >Any ideas/thoughts are appreciated, especially if you've been there and can
> >supply me with hints/idiosyncrasies/etc.
>
> I'm in the same place you are.
>
> I can tell you that I can _not_ get a Linksys LNE100TX card to work.
>
> RedHat Support tells me the driver (tulip.c) on Linksys's site will not
> work, and the instructions on the Linksys pages are also incorrect.
>
> Mike Nolan
> Dallas, GA