Simple Cisco Routing Question

[matte03]

I recently got a Cisco 2524 router with a T1 CSU/DSU. As we were in talks recently to get a T1. That fell through, anyway I figured I would experiment with the router still. Right now we have a 100Mbps switched network. My project is put the router in and make two subnets one with our computers and the other with our army of bandwidth hungry LAN cameras. Is this logical? And can I do it without any other modules for the router?
TIA
Matt

[Gertrude]

The 2524 only has one 10baseT AUI port on so there may be problems putting into a busy 100Mbps network. Also with only one ethernet interface on it the only way you could route between subnets would be to set virtual interfaces on it, and create what is called a "one-armed router". If there is not a large amount of traffic routing between subnets then this configuration may not be a issue, but if there is any heavy network usage that would be going over that link you may run into some congestion problems.

If it were me I would be using the Cisco router for just the T1, and let something else do the routing. For example a computer with 3 ethernet inetrfaces. A 10base card to plug into the Cisco 10base ethernet port, and then two gigabit ethernet cards to route between the 2 subnets. Also this computer could perform some extra services like packet filtering, DHCP, caching DNS and a possible proxy server for the LAN clients.

[matte03]

There is a 10BaseT RJ-45 connection on it will that not work? I would use it for the T1 but the owner opted for the 1Mbps WiFi since it was much cheaper.

[Gertrude]

Well even if your not using the T1 you could still use it as a one-armed router like I mentioned in the other post. The main problem with that is there could be some performance problems, but not knowing more about the layout of the network, and trafic levels its hard to tell for sure if that would be adaquet or not.

[matte03]

There isn't to much an awful amount of traffic. We have about 11 or 12 client workstations. I have a Linux box acting as a 'paperless' office solution. Users are constantly scanning in, viewing and modifying documents on this server. A Windows2k server serving our estimating database and Active Directory. And within a month or two there will be 15 IP cameras in the building that are uploading images when motion is detected to a NetBSD box acting as a FTP server. This is all connected to one 100Mbps switch.
TIA
Matt

[Gertrude]

From what you described it should be able to handle to load, but the only way to tell for sure is to hook it up, and test it. Try to simulate the traffic at high loads to see what it can, and can't handle in a test environment before you hook it up to the live network. I'm not sure what kind of load is produced by 15 IP cameras but as long as they all stay on the same subnet and don't have to traverse subnets you should be fine.

Ideally a dual homed host be it a normal computer running a BSD, Linux, etc, or somehting like a Cisco 2514 would be much more suitable for the routing in a situation like this. Personally I would just take a old Pentium 100Mhz+ pc with 64+ megs of ram running a BSD use that for routing.