Looking for fastest cheap networking solution

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needsnumbers

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Jan 10, 2007
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The scenario; Overclocked C2D system consumes 250watts which works out to costing me ~$180/year if left on for Torrenting. I have an old celeron system that consumes a fraction of that power saving me over $100 a year! I'd like to turn the celeron system into the file server of sorts. It'll become the ftp/http/torrent server because the actual down/upload of from the ISP is the bottle neck... except that there are GB files I'd like to put onto the C2D system. This is where I'd like some advice. I have a bunch of 100Mb full duplex switches but bandwidth wise that works out to 12.5MB/s making a Linux DVD iso transfer take nearly 10 minutes even when using ftp protocol. What is the best hardware to speed that up?
My C2D motherboard has a gigabit and the Intel ICH8R chipset has full duplex on all of it's USB ports! This makes it hard to choose. A gigabit switch and card for the celeron would give me a theoretical bandwidth of 125MB/s but what about installing a full duplex USB PCI card and running 2 USB cables load balanced?Is that even possible with free software? Wouldn't that give me the cheapest non-bottle neck networking between the 2 computers? 480Mbps x2 = 120MB/s. Pretty close and no need for a switch. The computers sit next to each other making the USB a favorite if it would work.
edit: Incase anybody questions the PCI bus speed, it's just a hair higher than a gigabit ehternet.
Any thoughts/feelings/advice?
 
I still use the C2D's on-board NIC (single, not a double) for it's Internet connection. This is an ASUS P5B-E, not the deluxe version so only 1 NIC.
I guess I could add one of my old Intel 10/100 NICs into a free PCI slot and use that for the internet. I'd have to adjust the metrics but that's easy enough. I'd also have to add a 10/100 NIC into the celeron machine for it's internet connection. I have a ton of them laying around so this has become the cheapest solution but maybe not the best long term. I might break down and get a gigabit switch from NewEgg for $28 which saves me the hassle of having multiple NIC's in each system.
 
If it's for a single haul of a whole pile of stuff, just use a hard drive, then gig-e. Gig-e should give you 35 - 50MB/s sustained.
 
Just a question about your energy savings estimate:

Did you factor in the time that your Core 2 Duo system would be running in addition to the Celeron? If you have that system on for 50% of the year, that would cost you about $90. Running the Celeron all year would actually only save you $10 a year. Now, factor in the time it takes you to setup the downloads on a different server, transfer the files between systems and actually build the system out. You'll also need to add in all the additional hardware you're going to have to buy to setup the network between the two. I think that you'll find that you won't end up saving any money for several years of running this setup.

Now, if you're like the majority of us, you just want an extra system running that will be a dedicated file server. Just don't kid yourself into thinking that you're saving money immediately.

I'd suggest getting an inexpensive gigabit swtich and gigabit NIC to network them and get on with it. There's a reason why copper networking is so mainstream -- it works well. The USB solution you speak of will be difficult to setup and it probably won't be any cheaper.
 
I've recalculated my numbers and here's the results after crunching;
Run all year round @ $0.1284/kwhr, the C2D 250w costs $281.20 and the Celeron 37w $41.62. That's a savings of $239.58 if I replaced the one with the other. Anybody else feeling solar power at this point :eek: . Ok, back on subject. I could foresee myself leaving the C2D machine on for 6 hours a day. That costs $70.30 which leaves me with a total savings each year of $169.28 or ruffly $170. Now this isn't totally accurate because the celeron system won't be using a display and won't always be idle, same with the C2D machine and I haven't taken into account the energy consumption of the stereo system or the dual LCD (19"/15"). After factoring in those variables I'm assuming I would still be saving over $100/yr.
Gigabit card is $6.99 from New Egg, and the switch is $27.99 after $10 rebate. Include shipping and tax and it works out to $43.12 invested. I have tons of short cat5e cable that should work which means I save easily $50 this year and over $100 every year after. That doesn't sound like a lot in the long run but there's a famous expression from my industry (automotive) and it goes something like this. You can find 1 way to remove 100lbs or you can find 100 ways to remove 1lb, the result is the same. So in ending, I know I will enjoy the $100 I save now because I've got a bunch of ways I'm saving money, not just this one.
I just hope this cheap gigabit card works. 4/5 eggs, cross fingers. I prefer Intel Nic's but this is an old cheap celeron system not worth the materials it's made from so I'm not about to put anything over $10 into it.
I'll let you all know how it turns out.
Last question; Linux ubuntu or XP pro? I'm very comfortable with XP pro and with nLite I can boil it down pretty far. I've never personally done anything with Linux but being 26 years old I think it's about time I invest into it so as to save another $100 this year (XP license). I have installed SuSe 10.0 last year on a friends machine but he fell back to XP for games. I can't imagine ubuntu not wanting to play nice for ftp/http/samba share/VNC/torrenting. I do really like uTorrent but only Windows :( . Ok, I've talked myself into giving Linux a try. I'll dual boot (got about 20 IDE HD's hanging around) so I can try out both.
 
needsnumbers said:
Run all year round @ $0.1284/kwhr, the C2D 250w costs $281.20 and the Celeron 37w $41.62.
Click to expand...

How did you you derive the power numbers? It seems very odd that the Celeron system uses only 37 watts, or 15% the power of the other system.
 
pigster said:
How did you you derive the power numbers? It seems very odd that the Celeron system uses only 37 watts, or 15% the power of the other system.
Click to expand...

P3 Kill-A-Watt meter. Plugged in only the boxes and those were the results. On startup the celeron system only gets up to 63 watts. It then gets up to peak 65 but idles at 37. Disk activity brings it up to around 40-43 but yes, it's amazing low power consumption. This is an old celeron, don't even know the speed but it's only got 256MB ram. I'll get the specs later when I actually install an OS. It runs xp fine. A little slow on some program loads but over all it's a fine web/office document machine and considering my ISP upload is limited to 1Mbps I shouldn't have to worry about the load, lol. This is a personal server, nothing fancy dancy.
 
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