help with crack rack

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Me and the wife want to setup a crack rack for doing SETI & DPAD. We currently have 3 machines for the project (one was donated yesterday). They are mostly P3's I believe. All I'm missing is the actual shelving unit to install them on. The wife even gave me permission to mod the shelf to install fans for cooling, etc., as the unit will be in the garage.

My current issue, however, is connectivity. It is going to be relatively expensive to install a wireless setup, but it is possible. Would it be possible to setup BOINC to manually transfer files? Just setup a high cache level (5 days or so), and manually transfer the WU / results? I don't know enough about BOINC to anser this myself.

EDIT: Looks like I'll be putting win2k on all of the machines, and using Terminal Services to do Remote Desktop.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

 

[networkman]

Dare I ask.. how far away is the garage? At my place, I dug a trench, put down some PVC pipe and ran Cat5e cable thru it so that I could hook up the PCs in the garage to the network in the house.

In my case the garage is about 20' back from the house - it was fun - done in a weekend.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Good point. The garage is part of the house. From the router to the rack is about 29 feet, as per my wife's tile counting. I will measure this when I get off work. There is one wall (back of the garage), and one door (always left open).

Network configuration: I have a 8-port 3Com gigabit router of which two computers are plugged into. The gigabit router, a print server, & line from cable modem are going into a router. I plan on getting a 8 or 12 (possibly 24) port switch for the garage, and creating a wireless connection from the rackmount switch to the router. Not quite sure how to do this yet, but I'm working on it. I'm doing what research I can at work (I don't have access to all sites).

Oh, and I rent, so I can't do what I would really like to do. Otherwise, I'd have built this rack into the wall in the office, along with a sub-circuit breaker just for the office, with two 30-amp breakers. But that isn't an option.

 

[networkman]

In that case, I'd say just run a network cable out to the garage(stick it in a corner behind molding or similar) and hook it up to the uplink port of a 10/100 switch, plugging your machines in the garage into the switch. No need for an additional router in the mix.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Well, I don't think it would be good to run the wire, because not owning my house, I couldn't tack it up properly, and the puppy would just love to find a cable to play with... I think I'm going to go with two Netgear WGR614 routers. I'll replace my current router in the office, and use the other router on the rack...

I think that would work. Then running BOINC on all the machines won't be a problem. I'll install Win2k on everything, and use Remote Desktop.

I'm also looking at grabbing some dual P3 mobos & procs for later as well. At $80 for mobo & 2xCPUs, I think they would have some pretty good crunching ability for the money...

EDIT: I can get both routers for about $80. I looked at bridges, and they seemed much more expensive.

 

[RaySun2Be]

Instead of using 2 routers, you might look into using 2 access points that allow bridging

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2001/08/24/linksys.html

or check into this:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2002/09/11/wet11.html

 

[networkman]

Remote Desktop is one option... UltraVNC is another. In fact, I use UltraVNC at home with all of my rigs, 98/2000/XP.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: networkman
Remote Desktop is one option... UltraVNC is another. In fact, I use UltraVNC at home with all of my rigs, 98/2000/XP.

Okay. I will check that out when I get home as well. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Wolfsraider]

I rent too.

My office is on the second floor next to the bedroom, it ends where the garage starts, so I ran a router in the office out the window, down the roof to the back door of the garage (in behind where the hinge is) and put a 4 port switch up on the wall. from there I ran to the 8 port switch at the shelves my computers sit on. I do plan on going wireless this summer but it works for now. I am running 5 computers in the garage and 2 in the office.

I have not had any trouble so far, and the internet works great out there. I am running Rosetta@Home on boinc, without any trouble connecting. I haven't set up any monitering software, I can watch and see in the stats what goes on or go to the garage where I have 4 monitors set up to watch things, I do have to swap one around to see the last computer on a monitor though.

Mike

 

[RaySun2Be]

Originally posted by: networkman
Remote Desktop is one option... UltraVNC is another. In fact, I use UltraVNC at home with all of my rigs, 98/2000/XP.

I use UltraVNC at home and at work. In fact, I use it from home to remote into work, since it has an encryption module.

The only real problem I've had is trying to xfer large files over the Internet from work/home. Other than that, it works great!

 

[GLeeM]

One thing to remember is that wireless uses more electricity that wired.

I think I remember reading that it uses quite a bit!

 

[mondobyte]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
Me and the wife want to setup a crack rack for doing SETI & DPAD. We currently have 3 machines for the project (one was donated yesterday). They are mostly P3's I believe. All I'm missing is the actual shelving unit to install them on. The wife even gave me permission to mod the shelf to install fans for cooling, etc., as the unit will be in the garage.

My current issue, however, is connectivity. It is going to be relatively expensive to install a wireless setup, but it is possible. Would it be possible to setup BOINC to manually transfer files? Just setup a high cache level (5 days or so), and manually transfer the WU / results? I don't know enough about BOINC to anser this myself.

EDIT: Looks like I'll be putting win2k on all of the machines, and using Terminal Services to do Remote Desktop.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

Try using VNC - FREEWARE (Tight VNC is my favorite) ... and you may use any OS your heart desires ... like ... Windows, LINUX, VMS ... whatever !!!

Just a thought ...

 

[Insidious]

OK, time for the el-cheapo perspective.

connectivity:
Couldn't you just put a wireless card in one of the boards on your rack, then use network jumps to the others in the rack (with cheapo wired NIC cards) with cable and run the whole shebang on a single shared connection? I've never done it, but it seems like it should work and only $$ for one wireless card.

Remote Control:
for remote control of BOINC, I have had fantastic luck with BoincView to monitor and control boinc installations remotely (everything you can do locally from boincmanager) on a home network.

-Sid

(If I'm full of crap.. don't be mad.... just trying to offer help)

 

[networkman]

Don't worry Sid - whether you're full of crap or not we all still love ya!

 

[RaySun2Be]

Insidious,
I don't know why that shouldn't work. Wireless NIC, and wired NIC in 1 PC, with Internet Sharing on.

I've never tried it, but it should be worth a try.

 

[kevinthenerd]

Originally posted by: networkman
Remote Desktop is one option... UltraVNC is another. In fact, I use UltraVNC at home with all of my rigs, 98/2000/XP.

I'm not saying it's better, but I use RealVNC myself.

Can't you go with a console-based Linux approach and just manage them with SSH? Switching operating systems might give you a marginal gain in performance, but I don't have first-hand knowledge to verify this.