I'm coming into this conversation late, so sorry if I missed something
that's already been said.
hammer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [...]
> The idea is to put a server in the basement, with a dedicated
> telco line, and have the different parties in the house connected
> (ground and three upper floors plus a backyard house).
A total of 5 drops initially would be required. At this point, you'd be
looking at something along the lines of a multi-port serial card. They are
certainly available, but not inexpensive. I see them for about $60US and up
locally for 4 ports . You'll need to make sure you've got sufficient
hardware resources available. Some allow IRQ sharing, while some don't. OS
support will be important as well. What OS did you have in mind?
You'll also need to be concerned about distance. RS-232 serial cables can be
longer than parallel, but nowhere near long enough to cover the distances
you're talking about. RS-232 cables also require a LOT of pins - although
you might get by with 3 wires, it would be far from ideal. 8 are typical to
give full line control. Speeds will be miserable at those distances.
An alternative might be short-haul modems (about $50US each - one required
at each end of each link for a total of 10) which can use standard
telephone-type (2 or 4 wire) cable and obtain speeds of 56Kbps and up over
extended distances.
As you can see, this is not likely to be an inexpensive venture. For the
same costs, and probably much less, you could install 10Base-T network
adapters in each computer (about $20US locally), then run the relatively
inexpensive cabling up to 100M out to each location, converging at a hub
located wherever's most convenient (about $50-80US for 8 ports locally). The
cabling is fairly easy to work (reasonable care and RJ-45 crimp connectors).
This will provide much better throughput, and your in-house connections
won't be a bottleneck. Once you've got that in place, a gateway machine can
be set up to provide whatever services you want to the users.
Another alternative may be the phone-wire based solutions from Diamond and
others, although these are more expensive and are cerainly slower. Local
telco issues may be a problem as well, depending on who owns the wire in
your buildings.
> There are
> technical as well as social-administrative question to solve, and not
> least monetary; but it seems evident that already with two parties
> participating the costs per client can be reduced considerably [...]
I'd strongly recommend Linux for this task due to mimimal hardware
requirements, and ability to run in a "headless" location stuck in a
basement with minimal care or feeding! With a bit of work, a 486 with 8 or
more MB RAM and a carefully configured floppy diskette should be sufficient.
Monitor and keyboard aren't required once the system's up and running, so
you can stick the CPU away in a safe, dry place with adequate cooling
(heating?) and conditioned power.
I used Linux successfully with a dial-up line using diald to provide dial-on
demand service to several household computers. The only drawback is that the
first user to launch a connection -- one which requires establishment of a
new connection to your ISP -- will probably experience a time-out. This is
annoying, but a simple "retry" a few seconds later solves the problem. You
can configure it to drop the connection after a timeout to avoid costly
per-minute charges if they're a concern.
> [...] And sure there shouldn't be
> too much administrative and maintenance workload.
I wouldn't be too sure about that! If money is involved, they may have some
pretty high expectations. Then there's the whole performance issue. If
someone decides to do a lot of stuff, others will suffer. You can use http
cache (squid/apache) on linux to ease things somewhat, but you'll still be
sharing a single dial-up line. I'd be concerned about headaches from the
neighbors when it doesn't work.
Just some thoughts!
- Bob
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