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Creating a Functional Network for a Radio Station?
E-bot & Ro-bert asks: "I volunteer for my campus radio station and, as the only techy there, I've been asked to help design their new network. We're on a very fixed budget and we're working with win98 PCs. The network needs to provide the ability to simultaneously stream and transfer large files (uncompressed WAV data) w/o interruptions to the stream. I know their current idea of using a simple hub and connecting all the computers won't work, but I'm drawing a blank on what to suggest. The specifics: Two of 6 Win98 PCs need to have the ability to broadcast audio data from any source on the network. The other 4 of 6 computers must be able to transfer files on the network w/o taking too much bandwidth away from the streams. I'm thinking of QoS, but how should it be implemented? What does the slashdot community look for, and suggest, in making a high-bandwidth network?"
Perhaps I'm over-simplifying, but uncompressed WAV data (2-channel, 44.1khz, 16-bits-per-channel) is only 1.411 Mbps. For the network itself, a 100 Mbps switched Ethernet should provide plenty of bandwidth and dramatically reduce latency.
The switch will allow you to dedicate 100 Mbps each way per machine by preventing each box from having to see streams in which it is uninterested. It will also allow you to run full-duplex, which will decrease latency if you're ACKing your transmissions (e.g. using TCP).
Really, a 10 Mbps switched network would probably be sufficient, but good luck finding a 10 Mbps switch these days.
I'd be more concerned about the ability of Win98 boxen to stream/process realtime data without hiccups, but I assume you've already got that solved.