Hi,

I'm in the process of getting a 1/4 rack setup at a major colo center. I would like to keep my costs down as much as possible, and one of the things my provider does is charge per network connection, instead of just total bandwidth from all of my machines. Because of that, I'm thinking of just getting a single network connection to all the computers in the rack. My question is what would you suggest as the intermediary between the colo centres network connection and the computers which I have in the rack.
Obviously, I would like the internal communication (between machines in my rack) to NOT get billed. Security is also a consideration. However speed is not too big of a factor because I'm not likely to get more than a 256kbps connection, so regular 10/100BT networking equipment should be fine.
Thanks for your suggestions.

if you're on a budget, i'd recommend a cisco 2924. nice switch, fairly good management tools. you can run mrtg to get traffic analysis on each server.

they go for several hundred bucks on eBay.

if price isn't a huge consideration, go the extreme networks route.

feel free to ask if you have any more questions~

rd.

Thanks for the info, I'll look into the Cisco 2924.

Another possibility that I thought of: Does anyone ever worry about the case when traffic is flooding the single network connection (either in-bound or out-bound, for whatever reason, ie DOS, server gone crazy, etc.). I would imagine that if that ever happens having only a single network connection would make it very difficult to get a connection in to the machines in order to turn them off, or otherwise fix the problem. Thus, having a second network connection dedicated to only maintenance and emergencies might be very useful. I'm just wondering whether this is an eventuality that should be planned for.

Thanks.