Dedicated AH system

[eagl]

Heh... "sense of paranoia..."

I get about 6 hours prior notice for all "new" trojans, worms, and viruses out there courtesy of blackice defender running on my win2k gateway.  At least 6 hours before the recent ssh exploits were widely reported, BiD showed an increase from about 20 port probes a day to over 100.

I don't rely on blackice for internal security because application filtering annoys me, but it sure shuts down and reports most external threats just fine.  It even lets me identify my ISP's server sniffer so I can specifically block it when I occasionally fire up apache or an ftp server for friends/family.

[TIGS]

I just bought a new Gigabyte GA-7VAXP Motherboard that has the KT400 Chipset - maybe I'm screwed for good, eh? Not really - LOL. I'm sure the KT400 chipset will stick around for a long time anyway, and as for the mobo I have now - here's the spec:

KT400 Chipset (well, duh!)
AGP 3.0 Specs (Supports AGP 8x)
USB 2.0 Supported
up to 3 GB of PC3200 DDR
Realtek 10/100 LAN integrated
Promise RAID controllers
Firewire ports (3)
SPD-IF PCI outlet (not a card, but fits by the slot, same as firewire and the 4 additional USB 2.0 Ports)
AMD Athlon XP supported, of course - up to 2600+ so far (officially)
Oh yeah, Dual-BIOS setting - a Gigabyte trademark
Included softwares: EasyTune 4 for overclocking (only by Gigabyte), OEM versions of Norton Personal Firewall and Norton Anti Virus.

It's worth mentioning for those of you who wants a reliable mobo to purchase for a dream system just to run AH - however, my system will not just run AH, but other applications since this is my 2nd puter - first to be built from stratch.

I'll be posting up pics of the system as soon as I get it completed (need 256 MB more of RAM, Win XP Home Upgrade, 2 more Blue LED Fans, and a blue cold cathode light) - not to mention about 215 dollars down the drain too!:mad: )

A sense of paranoia ? Hell, yeah! In the meantime, will someone give me 14.95 so I could get myself back into AH permanently?

TIGS
--Hogans Heroes - Colonel --

[Hussein]

Stupid UBB

[Hussein]

My system:

MSI K7T266Pro-ultra2
512Mb Crucial DDR
1.67Ghz XP (2000+)
GF3 Ti200
150Gb IDE hd's

Only fan on the system is the noiseguard on the power supply.
Rest of the system is PASSIVELY watercooled meaning no fans just a big bellybutton radiator and a pump. No noise except the hum of the power supply (thinking of getting an ultra silent model..)
It's really so silent that unless the power supply would make noise I wouldn't be able to hear the computer at all.

I prefer that instead of 10k noisy scsi drives and 20 fans LOL!
What do you need scsi hd's to AH for? You get absolutely no benefit from them as far as AH is concerned.

I'd look for Epox 8RGA+ if I was planning to switch mobos.

[Vulcan]

Meh... 3Com cards... horrible things. And they grab CPU cycles. And they have compatibility issues.

Good old DEC (now Intel) chipset pisses all over them.

TOS? Heheheheh Puck. Like hell, it probably adds 10% worse performance screen to wall as soon as you put in QoS queing your kick the performance of your system back. All your doing is adding overhead to the router on the internal interface, and being a Cisco DSL router it'll be as gutless as hell (what is it an 827?). Unless its a 1700 series

And small UDP packets ARE GOOD. Do a trace over distance and watch the packet loss go thru the roof as your increase packet size.

p.s. if Swoop gives us P-40s for the CAP you owe me

Originally posted by Puck


Thanks for the advice.

By the way, I do with network packets what you do with high performance aircraft  

I'm an electrical engineer that does networking for a living, but I seriously appreciate the thought and the effort you took to bring this up.

I generally use high-end 3Com on servers and game machines.  I have a Cisco DSL router backed up by an insanely fast Unix based firewall/router that knows enough to give AH the right of way.  The bad news is the upstream routers ignore TOS, but at least in my own little world AH has unquestioned priority.

One problem with the AH network model (well.  It's a brilliant idea that can cause problems) is AH uses a LOT of very small packets.  At least I don't have to worry about the frag flag  

The net result?  I probably have 0.1% better performance wall to screen.  BFHD, eh?