I've just recently finishing installing a 43 client network over here in Iraq hooked up to a Satellite internet system. While most of the clients are running win2000 my server is running IPcop on a Via Nehemiah 1ghz processor. Also has 256 ram in it with an 80 gig HD. I'm planning on upgrading from the 43 clients to 130 clients. Right now I'm not maxing out the ram on the server and I'm guessing I have soom room to grow. I know the one thing I would do would be to upgrade to 1gig ram if I went up higher. Is the processor and board up to the task of routing that much traffic? It is a M10000 board.

Also since a bunch of my future clients are located about 1/2 mile from my server and I know I can't have more than 4 repeaters on a line or it gets out of sync ( ? ). At one point here we use 2 paragain modems to throw the signal a little farther. Are those a better choice or would an ethernet to fiber adapter be a better choice ? Is there any specific hardware compatability that I would need to watch out for or are the adapters independent of the network at all?

Depending on the services you are offering on the server your current hardware can easily support 130 clients for Internet traffic. The bottleneck will likely be the satellite connection if it is anything like mine. I run a P-II 350 with 256Mb of ram as a squid proxy for appx 130 client machines and it works fine. If you add other services like databases and the like, you will quickly use up the systems resources, especially memory.

I'm sorry, its pure use is just running as an IpCop box. There is nothing running on the server other than IpCop with squid enabled and dns caching and the basic services that IpCop allows.

I know my main bottleneck is the satellite connection but since I am in Iraq there really isn't any other choice. Right now I'm running a 1mb down and 256 up link thru a PanamSat connection and it's suprisingly fast. I have squid set up with a 50g cache (is this overkill? I really have no other use for the HD space on a 18 meg distro; it is a 80 gig HD) and right now I'm running about 35% of my connections are hitting the cache.

When I upgrade to 130 people I am also upgrading the sat connection to 4mb down and 1mb up which should help a lot. We have another service like that set up here running over 200 computers using a wireless lan.

Soldiers get antsy when they can't talk to people back home. The stuff we are providing is so much better than what is available through the army.

For most people just Instant Messaging and Webcams don't take up too much bandwith.

Considering your bandwidth, your server should be fine. I would up the RAM to >=512 if you can get it. 50 gigabytes is a bit huge for a cache but then again you have the space. I run a 10g cache currently, and it does alright. The only thing you will have to worry about is cache corruption, which would take a long time to clear and rebuild at that size. Your processor speed is well above anything needed to proxy for that many clients.

You are right about the repeater rule... No more then 4.

You will want to look onto fiber.. but it is kinda expensive...

If it costs to much then just use switches or bridges with another networking media... get creative.

I mean, you can build directional WiFi attenas out of Pringles cans that will cover that distance without a problem... the only problem would be the extra effort put into encryption.

I can give you a "HOWTO" on building the attenas... not hard at all.

I'd appreciate the howto since I need to throw the signal wirelessly anyways to my Company CP from my room so I don't have to keep running cable. Cat5 on the ground in the desert doesn't do too well.

As for wireless access its another option I was thinking of doing. Would it just be getting 2 routers and link them together or would I be better off getting one of the commercial access points. Money itself isn't really an object since I'm looking at around a budget of about 5000$ to just connect the 2 ends of this network. Thanks