Everything Else

The Keeper wrote: Interestingly, I just found a bag with a few GLMs in it. If you can't find any LP6000 or LP7000 cards in Europe, let me know. I'd be willing to sell you the lot for $20 including shipping.

Chris

Brilliant!
I' need I few other things from your site so I'll E-mail you during the weekend when I have more time.

//Harry

jan-jaap wrote:

The Keeper wrote:

deBug wrote: Only one of the boards has the optical adapter.

What you'd be looking for to complete the rest would either be called a "GLM", or Gigabit Loadable Module, or more likely at this point, Emulex LP6000 or LP7000 PCI cards with GLMs attached to them. Just yank the GLM off the LPx000 and drop it onto your cards. If you need more ports, that is.

What about bulkheads, do you have those? Or do you want to run fiber through a hole in the front panel of the Onyx straight to the card?

For me, that was a reason not to bid on that auction . . .

Lucky for me I guess
I been thinking on trying to have a small FC backplane or FC to SCSI bridge and stuff it in to one of the spare disk slots and integrate the whole FC stuff internally.
Of course with three FC ports a bulkhead would have come in handy for at least one of the ports.
If I need it I might have to make one myself I guess.

Okay, here's something that I thought of today.

Assuming that we were using 10/100 ethernet over fiber, is there a hub/switch (I always get them mixed up) that I can use that will concentrate several SC fiber connections into a single 10/100/1000 Cat 5e (or a similar connection) uplink?
We will leave the FDDI issue alone for now. I just want to know if we can do what I just asked.
I'm thinking of either making an individual system to bridge all my network connections together or bridge all my network connections together in the server where I can more easily control everything (I'm already using the server to bridge my regular network and my token ring network so why not do the same with everything else?)

EDIT: Here is the plan of doom.

Um... Why not just put a copper GBIC into a regular Fibre hub? Something like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Finisar-1000BAS ... dZViewItem

pentium wrote: Here is the plan of doom.

Did you realize you need a motherboard with a dozen PCI slots in the server?

Quad GigE PCIX/PCIe cards do exist (and actually depending upon driver make bonding easier too), making it only need 6 expansion slots. Some of the motherboards with those slots also have built-in U320, I'm thinking of the Tyan Thunder S2676 (3 PCIX, one PCIe, 2 PCI which is the heart of one of my servers at work) which takes it down to 5, so that means 2 quad GigE (say PCIX), FDDI, Thin Net, and Token Ring PCI. Doable, but not easy or cheap. Of course one could also imagine the server being some form of Origin or more realistically not having 3 bonded GigE lanes to your fibre channel or 3 bonded 100 Mbit to your router.

tillin9 wrote: Um... Why not just put a copper GBIC into a regular Fibre hub? Something like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Finisar-1000BAS ... dZViewItem

You know how stubborn I am when it comes to going copper.
EDIT: Wait, were you talking about those three gigabit uplinks?

Did you realize you need a motherboard with a dozen PCI slots in the server?

My proliant 1600 has six slots however if it causes other issues I might just build one separate system just for networking.

What is "Fiber Over Ethernet"?

If you're referencing "Fibre Channel over Ethernet", which is iSCSI, then the picture's a little confused, insofaras you'd have the Fibre Channel link connected to your server, replacing the yellow lines with more orange, and the server would then expose iSCSI target(s) to the other hosts in the SAN via Ethernet. Unless those three rectangles that convert from orange to yellow are iSCSI target servers, in which case, knowing this is a home network, is seriously overkill. One server would be plenty for anything smaller than a medium-sized corporate LAN.

If you're referencing "10Base-FL"/"100Base-FL"/"1000Base-FL" or some other variation on that theme, where it's a standard Ethernet stack that just happens to be using a fiber optic transport, then it's more accurate to say "Ethernet Over Fiber". That's relatively straightforward to set up, since most hubs/switches that expose fibre optic ethernet links also have copper ethernet links to connect to the rest of the network.

If you're not referring to either of these, then you need to clarify your terminology a bit further. Fiber optic cables are just a transport. They don't dictate a protocol in and of themselves. Fiber optic cables can transport many different protocols (albeit typically not simultaneously, unless the base protocol can encapsulate other protocols, such as what you get when you layer an IP network stack on a Prisa FC card; Emulex and QLogic used to do that in the 1-Gbit FC space, but it was a pain for them to maintain, and not many people used it, so everyone has since dropped support for IP over FC), whether it's ATM, FDDI, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, etc. Just like using a particular piece of copper doesn't necessarily dictate a protocol -- RJ45-based cables are also used in ATM, FDDI, and Ethernet, albeit with different pinouts for each, from what I can remember.

Chris

The Keeper wrote: What is "Fiber Over Ethernet"?

Whoops. I meant Ethernet over fiber.

If you're referencing "10Base-FL"/"100Base-FL"/"1000Base-FL" or some other variation on that theme, where it's a standard Ethernet stack that just happens to be using a fiber optic transport, then it's more accurate to say "Ethernet Over Fiber". That's relatively straightforward to set up, since most hubs/switches that expose fibre optic ethernet links also have copper ethernet links to connect to the rest of the network.

that's the one!

Three of these should do it.

*clicky*

Bummer that they don't ship to canada.
If only someone lived locally enough to pick them up for me and send them one by one as to be easier on my wallet...

I should try to get my SAN set up - Keeper knows what loads of stuff I have, including now a pair of Brocade fabric switches... QLA2200's support IP-over-FC on the PC side, and I have some Prisa dual-port NetFX PCI cards for the SGI side.

In any regard, this is the zone of least resistance, that is this technology was what was popular, so much gear is prevalent.

On the Ethernet side, stuffing some D-Link DE530 gigabit cards (Marvell chipset) in some Dell Dimension 2400's (MySQL, back-end-processor, network-manager type setup) yielded a synthetic bandwidth test of about 41 MB/sec between hosts. This is in a 32-bit/133 MHz PCI environment, under Windows XP. Point of reference.

I have an Indigo FDDI board, single channel though, but has the optical transciever on it. Came out of my first R4k Indigo, which apparently came originally from NASA... never tested though, and I've been loading up the Indigo's with G130's so a bit redundant here. Guess that means it could be up for tradin'...

Hey man, nothing wrong with fiber! I'm running a large amount of it at my house and I really have a good reason, HONEST! First off I drink the Cisco coolade so at the core of my network lies a Catalyst 5505 blade switch with a IIIG supervisor engine, a GBIC interface card, 2x24 port 10/100 cards and a Route Switch Module. Why you ask? It runs several vlans with Layer 3 MLS and trunks to the Catalyst 3548XL in my livingroom over gigabit fiber.

I used fiber instead of copper for the simple reason that copper GBICs are horridly expensive compared to short haul mmf ones and SX fiber Gigabit NICs also tend to be insanely inexpensive It's also worth noting that with the recent rise in copper prices fiber is often much cheaper at great lengths.


At the edge of my network lies a Cisco 2611 with a 100Base-T WIC card that does all the routing to my ISP. I also have a 2500 that acts as a VPN server on occasion. You might also like to know that I have an IBM 8229 token ring to ethernet bridge so I can talk to my old token ring stuff if I get the need and a little thinnet for good measure. The 8229 is definitely worth looking into if you insist on running token ring like I do (got mine for free), just don't expect amazing speed going from token ring to Ethernet if you do that (token ring frames fragment when they're bridged to 10Base). Either way, I understand your addiction and good luck!

-Jesse

Dr. Dave wrote: I should try to get my SAN set up - Keeper knows what loads of stuff I have, including now a pair of Brocade fabric switches... QLA2200's support IP-over-FC on the PC side, and I have some Prisa dual-port NetFX PCI cards for the SGI side.

Hey, did you manage to reset the passwords on those Silkworms?
I'm holding off a purchase of some 2800's til I can figure out how to reset the password.

zahal wrote: Hey, did you manage to reset the passwords on those Silkworms?
I'm holding off a purchase of some 2800's til I can figure out how to reset the password.

The only way I could figure out how to do it was to hang a serial cable off the 2x5 header on the 2800 mainboard, feed it through the gap between the mainboard and chassis, and catch the VxWorks prompt before the Brocade firmware starts booting. You can reassign the MAC address that way, too, to clone a Brocade 2x00 switch.

Chris

Well I'm nearly there.
Yesterday I paid for 50 (yes, fifty) AUI to ST fiber transceivers so that takes care of most of my systems. Now I just need three 100Base FX ST PCI cards and three 100Base FX SC PCI cards and every computer I have will be outfitted.
Now to get the most important items. The switches.
Some may of seen that I am looking for some BayStack switches. After I have those the network should be pretty much complete and because they can be linked together I can eliminate one heck of a bottleneck between the switches.
All in all it's going to cost another $200 to finish it off but I hope to sell some of the spare AUI to ST transceivers as I really don't need that many (but it was a good deal at $20 as they are all the same and brand new).

Well I am one step closer to getting this done.
I have managed to aquire all the AUI transceivers I will ever need.
I now have 52 new transceivers so we can stroke those off the list now.
It feels great to retire the old BNC transceivers.

What does that leave me to get now?
3 x PCI 100BASE FX ST network cards
5 x PCI 100BASE FX SC network cards
2 x Baystack 28104/ADV Fiber switches
(Optional) 1 x Baystack 28115/ADV Cat 5e switch

Limiting factor: Money.
I think I can get hold of the SC cards here and at that price I could eliminate the ST cards and just buy more cable with SC connectors on both ends. The Baystack switches on the other hand will probably be (to my dismay) the last things I will get. In the mean time I will live with a media converter I have.

nekonoko wrote:

deBug wrote: But are you saying I can use it as a network card as well ???

Apparently so - here's a quote from the manual:

/etc/hosts

This is the file used for configuring NetFX Fibre Channel ports as IP interfaces. Each
local Fibre Channel port that we wish to use as an IP interface must have an entry in
/etc/hosts. The IP interface name must match the port's npname in /etc/NLPorts. Each
remote IP port can be defined either in /etc/hosts or by using a name service protocol such
as NIS or DNS. However, keep in mind that the name in the NIS or DNS maps must still
match the entry for that remote port in /etc/NLPorts.

BTW, you can download the PDFs here:

http://futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/prisa/

I have the drivers on my FTP if you don't already have them.

Ethernet over fiber: is that possible ? someone has tried with success ?
I was asked to swap a few development boards for a pair (qty=2) of QLogic QLA 2342
they are PCI/64 2Gbps@133Mhz Fibre Channel cards, I sill need to find cables

I haven't understood: can ATM use CAT5 cables ?

ivelegacy wrote: Ethernet over fiber: is that possible ?

Of course .

ivelegacy wrote: I was asked to swap a few development boards for a pair (qty=2) of QLogic QLA 2342
they are PCI/64 2Gbps@133Mhz Fibre Channel cards, I sill need to find cables

QLA2342 is not an ethernet board, it's a Fibre Channel host adapter. It is good for attaching storage to an IRIX system, either directly (FC-AL) or using a SAN fabric.

It's possible to run TCP/IP over transport layers other than ethernet (Firewire comes to mind), but the software stack has to implement this. TCP/IP over FC is not possible with the QLogic FC adapters, at least not with IRIX.

jan-jaap wrote: It's possible to run TCP/IP over transport layers other than ethernet (Firewire comes to mind), but the software stack has to implement this. TCP/IP over FC is not possible with the QLogic FC adapters, at least not with IRIX.

here I had (then I sold) two Firewire 400 board and I did a pretty experiment with them:
I connected two machines over a firewire cable and I got a firewire lan just forcing the linux kernel to put TCP/IP over them
I'd like to do something similar with FC, just because they are faster

ok, not with IRIX, I guess

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

about ATM, I happen to have two Efficient network ATM NICs 25Mbps
I'd like to set up a small network between two machines for testing purposes
under Octane, they are PCI-cards

they come with rj45 connector (which is the same used by Ethernet, just with different wiring)
can anyone clue me in as to the cable pinout? I have an ethernet crimper
I have no idea of which way to order the wires