Customer feedback time,
What can be done to improve Mojo’s?
I’d realy appreciate some feedback here guy’s even if it’s ’ it’s great don’t do a thing’ Give us something to aspire too.
Damski
Didn’t think it could be better after the last one but you lot managed it. If you can make it better than that I will be truely amazed…maybe some lap dancers 
sirgaz
I think the fixed i/p addy thing worked well.
So i think we should continue with this.
we need some cat V couplers so we can run some longer network cables to other parts of the room.
Mickey-C is laying in more power. Upgrading the power supply on the main board for the next meeting from 20A to 48A, so that should take care of any problems there.
Looking at the switch fund, it wont be long before we get our new switch. We raised ( final figure to be confirmed yet by Mojo ) about £340 ~ , which exceeds the expected figure considearbly.
The Chicken Tikka Mosala / Stew ( All you can eat for a fiver ) was a great success, think we should do this again next time.
It all went extrememly well, I think it just gets better as it goes along.
As a note, I think one or two people forgot about their bar tab, could those concerned contact Mojo.
Sarge
It all went extrememly well, I think it just gets better as it goes along.
i think this sums it all up.
Perhaps next time we wont overload the leccy. Cha, and monkeys might fly out of my butt. 
BS
maybe if you could just move the pub closer to me ?
Seriously though, I thought this time was the best one so far, I don’t think you need to do anything more.
Think it’s all working out very well
Thnking out loud though loud, I wonder is the seating could be better so it would be a more group thing instead of being split by the arches and up corners? :flip:
I’m thinking next time a double row of tables in the “main” room right down the middle - all the wiring can then go between the tables and most folks will be in the one area together.
Food - £5 all you can eat works but next time I need more accurate numbers and you guys to choose the food OK?
Gigabit - works for those suitably equipped but won’t be fully sorted until we get our 48 port Gigabit switch - later this year hopefully. If we have a windfall here I’ll buy it for you - as for those on Gigabit it was SWEET downloading Without a windfall - we’ll have to continue as we are for now.
Can’t think of anything else ATM - will post up when something hits me.
Just a thought - if we could find cheaper Gigabit switches which support copper or fibre (GBIC) trunking could we not trunk the interconnects to provide the backplane speed we need? New 48 port switches are about £2.5k :scared: Or what would happen if we connect two unmanaged Gigabit switches with say four cables = 8 Gigabit at full duplex? Would the switches be able to balance the load or just take the nearest available route?
The two rows down the middle would work now the beize monster has now been disposed of 
Hi Mojo - unmanaged switches can not be trunked (link aggregation as its called proper). Only managed switches. So your looking at a nasty figure for a 48 port one. If i were you i’d dump the gigabit fibre as its simply too expensive for your needs - copper gbit is cheap on both the switch end and the network card end and the cable end.
If you were to ask me what swtich to buy i would say this one:
http://www.hp.com/rnd/products/switches/2800_series/overview.htm
Moved all my network over from Cisco to HP Procurve now. Its super kit, if totally underrated. Most people say to me “why dont you get cisco theyre the best?”. Try HP procurve, and then you’ll see i say
Butuz
I seem always too busy to attend 
but could easily help out if you need faster networking.
I have 2 (12 & 24 port ) managed gig switches (dell/smc tigerswitch) that you could borrow.
If someone will collect and drop off I don’t mind lending em out. At least that way you could have link aggregation if reqd. I could even preconfigure them for you.
Perhaps it will help out until the fundage grows enough or the price drops enough to buy your own switch.
Gandelf
Thats cheap as chips!
Butuz
Cheap, but it has no tapping into the backplane for stacking a second one at full bandwidth.
There was a 48 port HP procurve Gigabit switch on ebay this week with a ‘buy it now’ for £1350. By the time we have got one or two more events done the prices may have dropped to meet the fund. Keep yer fingers crossed.
Mojo suggested the double table layout when we arrived on thursday night. The reason we never went for this was to do with smoking. Slim dude is ultra sensitive to cigarette smoke and the wall provides an effective barrier fo those who dont want to breath it. Having a smoking / non smoking side is a must. It also means we have loads of space for a third row of tables if neccesary where the green monster used to be. ANyway the bar is the social area, and getting up from yer PC once in a while to let yer eyes rest is a good thing, rather than sitting looking at the screen all day.
Sarge.
I cant help but think your aiming a bit too high bilko me old chap.
That switch can run 4 serperate trunks of 4 gigabit ports. I.e 8000Mbit per trunk at full duplex. Are you seriously telling me that having 4gbit each way between that main switch, and up to 4 other devices isnt enough?
I would say it is plenty enough, for our means. And if it isnt - we are gonna have to pay a hell of a lot of money to get it how you want. Your wanting us to move from small - mid sized networking kit, to enterprise networking kit just so your downloads dont slow down a bit when 40 other people are all leeching too? You could go on forever mate and have 4 x gigabit links between everyones PC’s and the main switches and 10gbit links between the main cluster of switches, but diminishing returns kicks you in the face real fast, and you have to spend huge money to eek out those last few megabytes/s. Not worth it IMHO.
Sureley that 24 port switch, with 2 or 4 gigabit links per server, and another 100mbit switch cascaded off it for the non leechers, would do us proud? And all for less than £500 hopefully.
just my 2p
Butuz
Originally posted by Sgt Bilko
Cheap, but it has no tapping into the backplane for stacking a second one at full bandwidth.
Not picking just curious…
How many ports are req’d?
Does the procurve support jumbo frames? as it makes a huge difference to the client’s overall throughput.
Gandelf
Originally posted by Gandelf
[B]Not picking just curious…How many ports are req’d?
Does the procurve support jumbo frames? as it makes a huge difference to the client’s overall throughput.
Gandelf [/B]
Not sure about the full spec on that procurve switch, but 48 ports are a must.
Originally posted by Butuz
Sureley that 24 port switch, with 2 or 4 gigabit links per server, and another 100mbit switch cascaded off it for the non leechers, would do us proud? And all for less than £500 hopefully.
Best you come and see how things work first dude.
There is no ‘server’ as such, only one that controls the dc++ conections, all traffic is from person 2 person , and not via the server. Its max port to port bandwidth on the switch that scores here, we need 48 ports all capable of talking to each other at full chat.
We either need one 48 port box, or two 24’s with tappings into their respective backplanes for stackability - two 24’s with a 4 gig trunk wont cut the mustard in this case - it’ll cut the cheese instead.
Anyway, if we’re gonna spend money on this a degree of future proofing is a must, no point buying something then having to upgrade later - and another two maybe three events will give us the funds to do things properly - and thats not all that far away.
Lets not get impatient here.
At the moment everyone is guaranteed a minimum of 100 m/bits per port on the Cisco 5509, and thats working fine. we just gotta wait a little longer for gigabit - but we WILL get there.
Lets do this right … or not bother at all.
Sarge
Indeed sarge no point in doing things by halfs and then having it costing more.
Hehe yep true id need to see what you did at the last one - but i didnt see unfortunatly
Yes - your right of course - as we’re running in a peer to peer filesharing ad hoc nightmare instead of a server centric layout - the network design changes. A 48 porter would indeed be far more preferential - that HP 2800 series 48 port i quoted above has a backplane speed of 96gbit/s methink that sould be enough for even you
I agree with what you say about future proofing to a certain extent - but be fortewarned, futureproofing doesnt work in networking very well, because if you spend a lot more now because it will be future proof, in 3 years time, you can get twice as many ports at 10 times the speed for half the price. (approximatly, but you get my meaning) 
3 Years ago i bought a load of HP Procurve 2524 switches - £600 each, 24 port 100mbit managed with 2 freemodule ports to upgrade to gigabit (gigabit modules were £250 each. Now i can get Procurve 2650 for around the same price and that has 50 10/100 ports and 2 built in gigabit ports which can also be modfied to take gigabit fibre. Moral of the story is buy only what you need now, dont waste money buying stuff you may possibly need in the future.
Butuz
I think you may be going overkill sarge…
Most gig clients can’t handle 40% of 1gig bandwidth for prolonged use, if someone has something interesting to everyone they will be the bottleneck not the switch.
A four port trunk will carry a lot more clients across it than 4. As the port can run at 100%.
Jumbo frames is a must. Otherwise processor and disk will be bottlenecks, once disk cache ram has been exceeded.
If you managed with 100mbit this time then low spec 1gig will be overkill and high spec will be a waste of valuable money and resources that could be put to other use.
Why not get one smaller good 24 port switch and other clients get 100mb. Take it in turns, and besides not everyone has decent gigabit networking. Even intel’s CSA gigabit is pants.
And that’s without taking into account how often it will be fully utilised.
/2p rant over…
Gandelf