3 nics in one box

I will shortly be upgrading my dsl connection to 3M/768 and will be issued 4
static IPs.....

I plan to put a small 5 port switch on the dsl modem with one port going to a
Linksys wrt54g wireless router and it will use one of the static IPs for it's
connection to the outside and provide a small home network with private IPs.

I would like to use my old linux box as a server with 3 nics, each nic with one
of the remaining static IPs.... one to serve Apache, one to serve Email, and
the last as an FTP. Each nic will be directly connected to the Switch.

Am I setting myself up for more trouble than before.... back when I just used
two nics (one for the wan and the other for the lan via a hub) and ran
Webserver, Email, FTP and DNS.....

Any suggestions?

On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 21:42:29 GMT, (E-Mail Removed) wrote:

testing..... nic 1 and 2....

(E-Mail Removed) wrote in
news:(E-Mail Removed):

> I will shortly be upgrading my dsl connection to 3M/768 and will be
> issued 4 static IPs.....
>
> I plan to put a small 5 port switch on the dsl modem with one port
> going to a Linksys wrt54g wireless router and it will use one of the
> static IPs for it's connection to the outside and provide a small home
> network with private IPs.
>
> I would like to use my old linux box as a server with 3 nics, each nic
> with one of the remaining static IPs.... one to serve Apache, one to
> serve Email, and the last as an FTP. Each nic will be directly
> connected to the Switch.
>
> Am I setting myself up for more trouble than before.... back when I
> just used two nics (one for the wan and the other for the lan via a
> hub) and ran Webserver, Email, FTP and DNS.....
>
> Any suggestions?
>

Why?
What do you think is the advantage for having three IP#S?
It can be made to work, but I can't see ANY advantage to doing so.

> I would like to use my old linux box as a server with 3 nics, each nic
with one
> of the remaining static IPs.... one to serve Apache, one to serve Email,
and
> the last as an FTP. Each nic will be directly connected to the Switch.

Why? just use one NIC and use eth0, eth0:1, and eth0:2 for the three IPs.

It's a waste of two NICs.

/dev/null wrote:

>> I would like to use my old linux box as a server with 3 nics, each nic
> with one
>> of the remaining static IPs.... one to serve Apache, one to serve Email,
> and
>> the last as an FTP. Each nic will be directly connected to the Switch.
>
> Why? just use one NIC and use eth0, eth0:1, and eth0:2 for the three IPs.
>
> It's a waste of two NICs.

Why even 3 addresses? All those servers can happily coexist on one IP.

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 02:15:58 GMT, "IANAL_VISTA" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>--Why?
>--What do you think is the advantage for having three IP#S?
>--It can be made to work, but I can't see ANY advantage to doing so.

Eventually, this single box will be broken-out to three small linux boxes....
Webserver, Email, and the third... FTP and DNS (Primary)...possibly with a chat
expansion or what ever. I have the nics and the cost of building three more
boxes is less than $800, so that's not a question.

I have an objective to serve ALL my relatives... about 135 (within a
genealogical group) with information, data, email, etc. It will be a totally
SECURE site with only members of the group allowed. These genealogical cousins
are located in five countries and the last time I tried something like this I
had problems; mainly hard drive failure after a year (Fuji SCSI). Because
everything was in one box and one IP.... time and effort to restore was at a
max.... This time there will be three boxes and three IPs..... and a 4th box
with three nics and a complete b/u of the files. If something happens.... all
I do is turn on the fourth box and plug-in the cables. I will then be able to
fix/replace what-ever in the broken box with little to no down time and I can
work at my own pace.

My original question is three nics in one box..... I've never done this without
having one nic being a private lan. All my nics are of the same type: IBM
10/100B's and should self configure to IRQ and memory. Is there something I
should be looking out for as I install the OS for the single box (that will
eventually be the b/u box? I plan on using SUSE 9.x.

PS... My ISP is giving me 4 statics with my upgraded account so I intend to use
them.

"/dev/null" <(E-Mail Removed)> said:
>> I would like to use my old linux box as a server with 3 nics, each
>>nic with one of the remaining static IPs.... one to serve Apache, one
>>to serve Email, and the last as an FTP. Each nic will be directly
>>connected to the Switch.
>
>Why? just use one NIC and use eth0, eth0:1, and eth0:2 for the three IPs.
>
>It's a waste of two NICs.

Especially given the fact that it may be quite a pain to get the return
packets to use the assigned NIC's (all three will most probably have
addresses from within the same network, so they share a common route).

Basically, it doesn't make sense to have several interfaces to a single
network, unless the interfaces are configured for load-sharing and/or
redundancy.
--
Wolf a.k.a. Juha Laiho Espoo, Finland
(GC 3.0) GIT d- s+: a C++ ULSH++++$ P++@ L+++ E- W+$@ N++ !K w !O !M V
PS(+) PE Y+ PGP(+) t- 5 !X R !tv b+ !DI D G e+ h---- r+++ y++++
"...cancel my subscription to the resurrection!" (Jim Morrison)

> Why even 3 addresses? All those servers can happily coexist on one IP.

Because the OP was given the IPs as part of his service, I take it without
asking.

But you're right, it can all happen on one IP.

> This time there will be three boxes and three IPs..... and a 4th box
> with three nics and a complete b/u of the files. If something happens....
all
> I do is turn on the fourth box and plug-in the cables. I will then be
able to
> fix/replace what-ever in the broken box with little to no down time and I
can
> work at my own pace.

OK, so you have two machines instead of 4. One mirrors the "live" one. If
the live one dies you swap cables and fix at leisure. While you're at it
make it a HA setup. Then you don't even have to worry about switching
cables. And you should be able to do it within your $800 budget.

> My original question is three nics in one box..... I've never done this
without
> having one nic being a private lan. All my nics are of the same type: IBM
> 10/100B's and should self configure to IRQ and memory. Is there something
I
> should be looking out for as I install the OS for the single box (that
will
> eventually be the b/u box? I plan on using SUSE 9.x.

One problem you will have is that each nic gets the same network and gateway
which will play with your routing tables. Nothing you can't remedy with
route -del, but it's still a pain and shows the clunky-ness of your
solution.

> PS... My ISP is giving me 4 statics with my upgraded account so I intend
to use
> them.

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 18:40:14 +0000 (UTC), Juha Laiho <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>--Basically, it doesn't make sense to have several interfaces to a single
>--network, unless the interfaces are configured for load-sharing and/or
>--redundancy.

Exactly....
Since my network of 4 ips will share a 3M down and 768K upload, and since the
majority of my uploads on my private lan will be mostly email etc.... I want to
give the server(s) the majority of the upload bandwidth.... until I see how the
load will be finally dispersed. I've lived with a 128K upload for over 7 years
and shared that speed with my old configurations and the only problem was the
speed at which the group could retrieve the larger files > 500K. Some of my
genealogical data has files and photos that are > 2Meg.

This is one of the points I was unsure about when using 3 nics in one box....
the ability to proportion the load over the 3 nics. Email only needs a
fraction of the bandwidth but the FTP and WEB will need the majority.

If this systems works out the way I hope, I will be adding my significant
other's genealogy as well..... her's is three times the size I have to share.
Since all of my data is in English.... I also had the files xlated into Swedish
by a cousin in Sweden and is available for those cousins that have an English
xlation problem.

It's a project, I know.... but until I see a way to make easy b/u's (daily) and
a method to where I can shut down the server to maintain/upgrade/modify without
the shut-down of the entire network.... I can see no other way?????

I've not run a server(s) for a couple three years now... in fact, RH 7.2 was
the last upgrade I made to the old network. I've been trying to catch-up with
the latest info but it has been too slow to absorb everything available. I've
decided on SUSE 9.x because of the latest support issues and I've already DLed
the DVD install disc. Also, while I think of it..... one of the issues I had
before were packet collisions.... not that they were too many, it's the fact
that I had more than I would be comfortable with.... I'm putting a switch in
from the DSL modem (MAC to MAC) addressing to the 3 nics and the linksys wrt54g
router (private network). Before, I used a HUB to split the lan to 5 private
static ips and the wan was connected directly to the DSL modem. My linux box
did everything.... except print sharing, I have a hardware print server for
that. I think this may have been part of the congestion; not to mention the
768/128 connection.