jerichorivera's questions

I have a network appliance (QNO) that works as traffic load balancer and dhcp server. I would like to add a linux server in between the network appliance and the client computers. The linux server will be used to monitor bandwidth usage.

My problem is I still want DHCP to be served by the network appliance so that load balancing will still work efficiently. We are afraid that if we setup the linux server as the DHCP server the network appliance will not be able to load balance the traffic if it only sees the linux server as a single client connecting to it.

I've been searching all over for a tutorial on how to setup DHCP relay but have not found any. How do I setup DHCP relay on my linux server given there are two NICs attached to it, one connects the linux server to the network appliance and the other connects the linux server to the client computers.

EDIT

Router (DHCP) ----> [eth0] Linux Server (Relay agent) [eth1] -----> PC (network)

Router IP is 192.168.0.100 eth0 is on DHCP eth1 is static 192.168.2.11 (if I need to change this I can)

Tried to do dhcrelay -i eth1 192.168.0.100, but the PC was not getting any DHCP lease from the DHCP router.

I might be missing something here.

I have an ubuntu server (meerkat) that I had to replace a NIC since it is failing. So I removed the failing NIC and replaced it with two NICs inserted into two PCI slots on my server.

Everything's well except that one of the NICs name is eth1-eth3. Please see ifconfig -a result below:

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr xx:xx:xx:xx:50:a5
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:16

eth2      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr xx:xx:xx:xx:50:a4
          inet addr:xxx.xxx.xxx.98  Bcast:xxx.xxx.xxx.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::204:23ff:fec8:50a4/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:18746 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:25886 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:3423836 (3.4 MB)  TX bytes:3148479 (3.1 MB)

eth3      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:51
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:24 Base address:0xe800

eth1-eth3 Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:63
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:28 Base address:0xec00

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:116 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:116 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:8124 (8.1 KB)  TX bytes:8124 (8.1 KB)

I googled on how to change the NICs name via 70-persistent-net.rules but I got the following:

# PCI device 0x1186:0x1300 (8139too)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:56", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0"

# PCI device 0x8086:0x1076 (e1000)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:a4", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth2"

# PCI device 0x11ab:0x4361 (sky2)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:a5", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth1"

# PCI device 0x1106:0x3106 (via-rhine)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:63", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth3"

# PCI device 0x1106:0x3106 (via-rhine)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:51", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth3"

How do I change eth1-eth3 to just eth4? And why did linux label my new NIC eth1-eth3?

We have three remote offices (office A, B, and C), two (Office B and C) of them need to access the Linux file server and web application server in Office C. We also need to administer the network of the Office B and C from Office A, the network is comprised of servers, wireless routers and workstations. We also have a need to synchronize our database from Office B and C to the central database on Office A.

I am not really an expert on network technologies but our service provider offered Carrier Ethernet and Metro Ethernet to support our needs. Question is - which one is better for us in terms of scalability, reliability and quality of service?

EDIT

We are thinking of getting a 20Mbps pipe and share the bandwidth to all three offices (if possible) and we basically control (by traffic shaping) the allowable bandwidth per network. I don't know if I explained this very well.

Intro - We are planning on applying for Bandwidth-on-Demand from our ISP which gives us upto 8Mbps of data upsteam/downstream. If we exceed the allowable bandwidth the ISP will bill us for additional cost per Mb of data exceeded.

Question - is there a way to setup an ubuntu server to limit the total upstream and downstream bandwidth on the internet facing interface (uplink) to 8Mbps?

Additional info - the server will also work as a gateway server distributing traffic to four subnets each with his own interface.

I am planning to move everyone in our corporate office to domain control using samba on ubuntu but have doubts if this would be beneficial to us both for the IT Department and the Company.

I have read how one can use samba to work as a domain controller but I want to know what the pros and cons are before implementing it. We are currently using samba on our file server to share files to Windows OS workstations.

A little help from the experts is highly appreciated.