At 11:32 AM 10/28/98 -0800, you wrote:

You have two problems with this and they're both PC hardware-based. 1) IRQs are limited, if you subvert the printer and COM IRQs and have a single SCSI card for your disk (and the required SVGA display controller), you can use IRQ 3,4,5,7,11,12,14,15. This will max you out at 8 NICs on a linux box. Each NIC must have its own IRQ.

Survey says, "BUZZZZZZZZ"

From http://www.adaptec.com/products/datasheets/quartet.html

"Hardware Interrupts: PCI interrupt A, supports shared interrupts"

So, if you are only doing 10baseT, you can have a mix of ISA/PCI NICs for a maximum total of eight NICs before you start running into serious hardware limitations. For 100baseTX you have a maximum of four NICs. Total cost should be under $900US, if you are running Linux, plus the time it takes to configure this mess (about three daze [call it a week]).

3 hours, includes: unpackaging all raw components, building system, installing the OS, setting up routing table and ipfwadm rules, installing ssh, and making the box basically secure. Then again, I build them on a regular basis. ------- John Fraizer | __ _ The System Administrator | / / (_)__ __ ____ __ | The choice mailto:John.Fraizer@EnterZone.Net | / /__/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / | of a GNU http://www.EnterZone.Net/ | /____/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ | Generation A 486 is a terrible thing to waste...