On Tue, Oct 30, 2001 at 03:27:58PM -0600, Paul Rech wrote:
> I need a high speed network connection between 2 database servers on
> IBM Netfinity servers.
> What are my options and what hardware do I need?

I once did something similar, although I just went with 100Mbit between
the two hosts, that was more than adequate formy purposes.

> I was looking to gigabit ethernet first, as I figured it would be the
> cheapest.
> But a sysadmin I know said he wasn't sure but he thought about $4,000
> for two cards and a switch.

What do you want a switch for? (Unless you want to hook more machines
in later of course).

> Is it really that much for gigabit hardware?
> Is gigabit the cheapest alternative?
> What kind of switch is required?
> What's the difference between a switch and a hub?
> What's the actual transfer rate you can achieve?
> 1,000,000,000 bits per sec/ 8bits = 125,000,000 bytes per sec
> 125,000,000 bytes  per sec / reality =~ 20MB/sec I'm guessing.

Transfer-rate all depends on the hardware.. 
I've been able to get 800KB/s between 2 10Mbit cards and around 7MB/s 
between 2 100Mbit cards, and that wasn't even state of the art hardware.

-- 
  Thomas Eibner <http://thomas.eibner.dk/> DnsZone <http://dnszone.org/>
  mod_pointer <http://stderr.net/mod_pointer>