How To Network All This Stuff?

After moving house and building out my basement (almost finished...) I'm starting to think about putting my system back together, along with newly acquired (but not new) hardware. Any suggestions on how best to network all this stuff? I have been using regular Ethernet.

I have:

A G5 running 10.5 with two 300 GB internal drives: for Photoshop

A G4 running 10.4 with one 80 GB drive: was my Photoshop machine, now I'm thinking I could use it to run some of my printers

An older G4 running 9.1 that is dedicated to my big Fuji Finescan flatbed

A Dell desktop running Windows XP which is dedicated to my Howtek 4500 drum scanner with DPL software

An Epson 9800 and an old 2200 using the Epson driver

An Epson 7600 and an Epson R1800 using QTR (USB only)

I'm planning to get some sort of RAID-1 external backup box which would preferably talk to more than one of the computers.

Oh yes, and a G4 Powerbook that I sometimes hook in.

Thanks for any help...

Ben

You could use a wireless network ,but transfer rates are definitely slower. This is a problem for larger files. Apple's router only allows three wired connections plus one USB. To keep things simple, I would wire connect the computers that handle the largest files, and wireless the others.

Since you are considering a RAID, you may consider getting two routers, connect them via ethernet and wire all the computers and the RAID. The peripherals will be connected to the computers themselves so will not use any ethernet slots. Any printers and harddrives connected to the router via USB or ethernet will be shared by all the computers.

I have two computers: one for the drum scanner, and one for photoshop. They are connected through my router with an ethernet harddrive attached for networked storage and a shared printer by USB.

Greg Davis said:

Since you are considering a RAID, you may consider getting two routers, connect them via ethernet and wire all the computers and the RAID. The peripherals will be connected to the computers themselves so will not use any ethernet slots. Any printers and harddrives connected to the router via USB or ethernet will be shared by all the computers.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the input, Greg.

I'm not clear why you suggest two routers... is it just to get enough Ethernet slots, or would one also be a USB hub, or am I missing something?

If I put the RAID box on an eSATA connection to the G5, would that speed things up and could the other computers see it easily, or would that be a pain?

A lot of this stuff would work on Firewire - any reason to use that?

Thanks! Ben

The router allows you to network multiple computers, share networkable devices , as well as have all the computers share the same internet connection. You can use (I think I've never done it) a USB hub to network computers and peripherals as well, but you need on of those computers to act as a gateway to the internet.

I have 5 computers (2 mac's, 2 winxp's and a Ubantu box) on my network, 3 are wired and two are wireless. One of the computers has multiple raids and is used to back up and share with the others. One has a printer attached a 2nd has a scanner attached. I have one box that is strictly mine for work, my wife uses 2 and we share the others.

Two routers are simply for more wired ethernet ports if you wanted the speed of a wired connection. You could do with one router and have wireless computers and a wired RAID. I find my scanned files, which reach upwards of 2 GB or more take a very long time transferring via wireless. My computers are using the 802.11 G network, not the newer N network. Yours are most likely the same. Wired connections are much faster for large files.

Apple's routers have a single USB port on them to connect printers or hard drives. I have both connected that all the computers share. They are not necessary if you want a dedicated computer to handle your printers, but a networked drive would be good, though a RAID will be faster using ethernet.

Thanks Greg, for the clarification.
I was confused because the router I have is still in a box somewhere, but it's a dumb (i.e. not Apple) one so I don't think it has the USB port. Otherwise everything makes sense; networking the printers is an attractive concept, and using the wireless when I want to hop on the network with my laptop for a few JPEGs or for website maintenance is a good idea.

Best, Ben

It depends a bit on how far away from one another the computers are and on how portable you need the laptop to be. If the computers are in different rooms, or if you want the laptop to wander and still be networked, an wireless router near your main network connection (e.g. the modem to your ISP) is in order. If everything is together, you can use an ordinary router. If you set up a wireless network, be sure to use encryption to keep others from freeloading or getting into your stuff. Ethernet print servers are available for both USB and Centronics type printers. I have had bad luck with wireless print servers, but your situation may be different. I use the regular kind and plug them into the router or a hub. You can use either ethernet cables to the router or USB wireless adapters to connect the computers to the network. Where you have a concentration of equipment or where there are printers, you will usually want to use cables to either a hub or a router. The common wireless routers need to be plugged into an ethernet backbone. That is usually the DSL, fiber, or cable modem. That means that you generally can't use two wireless routers in your home network. But you can plug a hub or a regular router into a wireless range extender to achieve the same effect. Be careful about address conflicts with the range extender - the system may see both the extender and the wireless router and get confused unless you set things up carefully.

Get an old PC, 3 identical NICs (network interface cards) and download the latest copy of "Smoothwall". It's free for non-commercial use.

I have 7 PCs, 3 printers, a wireless access point and can vary between Dynamic DNS (Plug in name resolution) and hard coded IP addresses if need be.

My P133 doesn't break a sweat handling it all.