Hi,

I've setup a tiny wireless network at my school.
My server is a laptop with no harddisk and with only 64mb Ram, so I have to bootup with a knoppix livecd.

DHCP-server is already setup and theres also an apache server to provide a local website for the chat-service.


I'm planning to add support for file-sharing, but what I'm worried about is if all the traffic has to go through me first.

Pcs that connect to the network get an ip from me automatically.


My question is if my server not only acts like a router but also as a switch?

Because obviously my server can't take that much traffic through a 11Mbps wifi connection.

I'm not sure I fully understand your network configuration. If this is a private network, and your Knoppix system is the only wireless access point, then yes, all traffic will go through your system. You may be surprised at the performance, 11 M/sec is a fair amount of bandwidth. The fact is unless the users are copying very large files, this will work well enough for say, 20 work stations.

You didn't say if you are some how providing Internet access. That can bog things down for that many stations.

I worked at a private school for a period of time. We ran upwards of thirty machines ( 20 or so students ) all through a router, hardwired at 10 Mb/sec. Performance was acceptable.

Hope this helps.

Yes, it's just a little private network that I start at 21 to 23 o'clock in the evening.
You see, I'm at college and we've demanded internet access in ower rooms, but so forth the direction doesn't agree.
So I've decided to set a local net without internet but with a chat-service through apache and some extented services like: Lan-parties and bla bla bla...

The only thing I was afraid of is wether or not my server could live with that.

I use a Asus WGL-160 wifi card that's 54Mbps , but because my server only has USB 1 the speed is limited to 11Mbps at best.

Might be time to buy a new laptop... :-D