Several days ago, while pondering an issue we’ve had at work an epiphany struck me. The problem we ran into was that our local network is a box of question marks. We don’t really know how it’s assembled or really what the rules are for using it, we just plug cables into wall jacks and if things work, they work. Until they don’t.

Enter NetInstall and NetRestore. These are the two imaging technologies for Macintosh and I’ve assigned my coworker to explore and develop images. Frankly he self-started it and I encouraged his exploration. We tried it first and both actions use a lot of bandwidth on the network and we eventually ran into a lot of problems. Not only did the machine we were working on take forever but it bogged down the server and caused huge headaches for everyone. We came to the conclusion that our local network just isn’t designed to carry any payload of appreciable size. It’s not really a complaint, but more of a characterization. It’s kind of fragile and wimpy.

So, was there a way we could still use ethernet technology without having to depend on our “provided” fragile and weak network? I sat in my chair pondering all of it, knocking some options out of the park instantly because of the machines we have. We can’t really depend on IP-over-Firewire as we have plain-jane MacBooks in the mix, they don’t have FireWire ports, just ethernet ones. As I looked across the way at all the server technology I had in the rack it struck me, each one, including the lowly Drobo had two Ethernet ports. Huh. Two. Only one was really being used to connect each machine to the network so each one had an available secondary port available. I then started to root around in my junk bin and found an old unused Netgear ethernet switch, five ports model, no fuss, no muss. I then grabbed a gaggle of short ethernet cables and started hooking all my servers and such to this little spare switch. Everything worked out magnificently well. In each server I configured these ports to conform to 192.168.0.* and assigned manual IP addresses for each of them. Then I found a unused Apple Express Wifi Access Point, plugged it in, set it for bridge mode and now I can extend this custom network into Wifi using 802.11N which is nice and fast. Just like that, cake and eat it too! What’s great about this setup is that my coworker and I can move large batches of data all over between these machines without having to worry about clogging up the network for all the other users who are trying to use these servers for their real work. Their files are small and their use sporadic, our use is large and nearly (sometimes) constant. The parts are just a few more blinking lights in the rack and just a little bit more spaghetti wiring hither and yon, but I don’t care, it works and it was free with the parts I already had on hand. The only part of all of this that upsets me is that I didn’t think to do it sooner. I suppose I should take some solace that it’s better late than never. Having this private access to all the systems makes both of our lives much better. We don’t have to complain to central networking anymore because we’ve abandoned their fragile wimpy thing for a far better solution in-house, and because it’s unroutable, we didn’t break one single rule, mind we don’t know what the rules are, but still. 🙂

It’s a good Friday.