Quamby LAN 12 ???

Friday 26^th March 2004 1:35 pm - Many People have asked me "Mark when is the next Quamby LAN", at last count it has been 5 people in the previous 2 weeks. This is generally a sign that people want some more Quamby LAN action. so here's the dealyo - the ONLY time that i have this semester that is appropriate for another LAN will be the week after easter, from Good Friday till the next Monday. I doubt that people will want a mid-week LAN so my proposed date for the LAN is
Saturday the 17th April
this date is far enough in the future to give people warning to cancel work commitments and still be in our mid semester break from Uni. If this date suits people then i think this time, the LAN will run from say 3:00pm Saturday till 12:00 pm Sunday, this gives me enough time in the morning to do the mandatory LAN VAN run into glenferrie to pick up the uni crew.
Misc News Concerning Quamby LAN developments (hardware):
This should probably be in three seperate News segments, but its easier to tack it on this one.
1/. The recent purchase of a 4 port 100 meg switch means that the Quamby LAN can now support (in un-expanded form) 12 computers (6 of them on 100 meg connections) when we hold Quamby LAN's and people bring switches along this is expanded to 32 computers (23 on 100meg) so from now on, we should have enough ports to run everyone at high speed.
2/. The Quamby Fileserver "Chomper" has been retired from active service, as it was total overkill for our LAN needs - AMD 2400+, it has been replaced with an Ex-buisness Server box known as "Dual" it runs dual P2 350Mhz processors and has 3x SCSI 10000 RPM, fast seek drives. The Basic layout is the same, it runs E-Smith server 6.2 and allows Windows filesharing, Apache Webserver, streaming MP3's, DNS resolution etc. The www.Quamby.LAN site has been revamped (your currently viewing www.Quamby.org) with frames, to allow faster access to files via HTML and browser interface (as a alternative to filesharing)
3/. Quamby goes Wireless - The purchase of a Wireless access point and its addition to the Quamby LAN, initially for the support of my brothers Laptop computers, means that the Quamby LAN can now support up to 20 computers over 802.11g wireless networking. while this is fantastic for internet connection sharing and moderate bandwidth gaming, it is not all that great for bandwidth hogging filesharing apps (such as DC++). All users on the Wireless share the same 54Kbps (compare ethernet cable at 100Kbps) bandwidth to access anything on the network, so the more Wireless connections there are, the slower they all are. This means that the Quamby.wlan domain will be useful if we run out of space in the rumpus room, but will never replace the CAT5 cable mess we usually use.