[CentOS] Central file server advice please

Sat Sep 22 13:51:48 UTC 2007
Paul <subsolar at subsolar.com>

On Fri, 2007-09-21 at 20:47 +0100, John Bowden wrote:
> The m/board has an on board Realtek 8110S Gigabit chip (RJ45). All but the 
> newest m/boards have 100 megabit nics and the switch is a 100 magabit, 8 port 
> switch. the DSL modem is an "up to 8Mb connection" (generally about half that 
> speed) with a 54Mb wireless point and 4 100 megabit ports. Only the laptops 
> use the wireless all the other PC's are RJ45 wired. There is normally only me 
> and the girl friend using the network. She browses the net. May be stream a 
> film and a tv channel at the same time from the myth box when set up. 
> Occasionally one or two mates round for a networked game of C&C Generals.

Generally speaking the Realtek Ethernet embedded on the motherboard are
not really good for use in servers since they only have a little
embedded RAM for buffering packets.  I'm not sure how much that specific
chip has ... 4 or 8K was common for RT chips.  That said, you probably
can get away with it in your situation, if the switch you are using
supports 802.3x flow control and the other devices do also.

Paul