--- TIC-TECH message:
Some schools are getting a T3 line instead of even a T1 line. I wonder how
that is decided?
I can NOT believe that the district will be giving us ports to go with the
eight data jacks per room. At Ingraham, that would be 480 jacks. That
would be very expensive and largely wasteful.
Does anyone out there have the answer and the willingness to share it. How
many new data switch jacks will be added during the LAN wiring IF ANY? It
would be nice if they at least gave us ports for the five to one ratio to
match the computers. For Ingraham, that would be about 185. That's way
less than eight jacks per room times the number of classrooms but way more
than we have now.
Even if the district does add data ports on switches in the MDF and IDF
equalling the five to one ratio, they probably won't be in the correct
places. In one of our buildings, there are 100 networked comuters in three
rooms. That building has 24 ports from the WAN wiring and only one or two
connections in each of the three rooms. Even adding eight ports in each of
these rooms will make little difference. We need two 24 port switches in
each of the three rooms, not more ports in the IDF.
Also, I really agree with the new district standards relating to switches
in one of the previous postings...One hub hop and good switches. But, what
about legacy (old equipment)? Is IDF to HUB to Computer OK? IDF to Switch
to Computer is great, but I don't have several thousand dollars to do it.
I will install up to spec switches as I create new networks, but I have no
budget for retrofitting former installs. And we have computers connected
to the Internet in all classrooms except three (who don't want it) so that
would be a lot of retrofitting.
Does the district have a suggestion for Network Cards, NICs?
Here is something that I checked out recently that should be of interest
for people with legacy equipment. A new Cisco switch was installed in the
library. This is a Cisco 2900 10/100 autoswitching switch. I connected up
the old 133 MHz IBM computers to it. They had 10 MHz Network cards, so I
replaced the NIC in one of them with a 100 MHz card to do side by side
test. I wasn't surprised at the results. The computer with the 100 MHz
card was no faster on the Internet than the ones that still had 20 MHz
cards. The "rate determining step", as we say in Chemistry, is the 133 MHz
speed of the computer itself, not the 10 MHz Network Card. I will update
cards when I can for the future when I can replace the computers with
faster ones.
-Wes
wfelty@gte.net
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