You might look into a single network card with multiple interfaces.  I
saw one in Micro Warehouse catalog that had four NICs built into one
card.   You might not have room for four NICs and you might have trouble
w/ the IRQs and I/O addresses.  Then again you might have the same
trouble with my suggestion, but it is worth looking into.

Adaptec makes a four port card called the Quartet.  I saw it on
pricewatch.com for $349.

Brian Kelsay

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steven L. Brendtro" <sbrendtro@home.com>
To: <kclug@kclug.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2001 10:53 AM
Subject: Theoretical Samba File Server

> I am researching to build a killer linux file server.  Here is what I
am
> thinking:
>
> Dual Athlon box with ICP Vortex RAID card, 7 or so 36GB LVD/160 Hard
drives,
> 1 GB ram, etc.  I have multiple users who will need to simultaneously
> sustain a throughput over the network of around 10MB/sec (80
Mbit/sec).
> This is close to saturating a 100Mbit/sec network interface.
>
> With an ICP card maintaining random access throughput of over 200
MB/sec,
> and the only bottleneck in the network cards, I was considering
installing
> multiple network interfaces on the server, say 4 of them.  Each of
these
> will be connected to a dedicated switch, each to a dedicated
workstation.
> From there the switches will make connection back to a local area
network.
> I will then run multiple SAMBA daemons, each with thier own unique
netbios
> server name (FILESRV1, FILESRV2, etc.), but each having share names
that
> point to the same mount point on the file system.
>
> With this setup, I theoretically should be able to draw around 80
Mbit/sec
> per interface.
>
> My question is this.  Does anyone see any problems inherent to this
setup?
> Could I possibly run into problems with SAMBA sending too much
broadcast
> traffic, reducing the throughput for my other network segments on the
same
> box?
>
> Any comments/suggestions are welcome.
>
> Thanks,
> Steven Brendtro