RE: Practical Limits

As the gentlemen below stated the limit is not the number of connections
but the amount of bandwidth usage. Depending on your iseries at a point
before you max out the bandwidth you might max out some other resource
like the processor or disc. If you are using up all of your bandwidth
you can go to a gigabit Ethernet card, but I think there are some
conflicts with gig Ethernet and SNA remote controllers.

Christopher 

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of James Rich
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 11:03 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Practical Limits

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, Pat Barber wrote:

> I don't recall seeing a book on the subject, but what are the
> practical limits to a single ethernet adapter supporting more
> than one remote location ?
>
> In the event of more than one ethernet adapter, do you use more than
> one DSL line or do you use a "smart switch" and bring all traffic
> through a single line ?
>
> I have a customer that wants to start using DSL at remote locations
> and I'm getting concerned about how much traffic a single adapter
> can handle.
>
> A typical site would be 1-4 terminals and 1-2 printers(2380)

A single 100Mbit ethernet card can handle somewhere under 100 megabits
of 
data per second (the maximum is 100 megabits per second, but that limit
is 
not always easily reachable).  Few DSL connections exceed 1 mebagit per 
second, most are somewhere just less than that.  But assuming all the 
remote locations had 1 megabit DSL connections are your internet 
connection was the equal of your ethernet card (i.e. 100 megabit - very 
unlikely and very expensive) then you could support 100 remote locations

with each location totally saturating their DSL connection.  This is the

maximum and very, very unlikely situation.

We support 17 remote locations with an average of 10 printers+terminals
in 
each location.  We connect to the internet with a partial T1, giving us 
768 megabits of bandwidth in each direction.  All the remote locations 
have DSL.  We are nowhere close to hitting the limits of our hardware.

James Rich

It's not the software that's free; it's you.
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