Selecting the right router for a cluster?

Jayv2251

New Member
Joined
Nov 30, 2021
Messages
25
Reaction score
2
Credits
365
Not looking to spend very much as this entire project is about repurposing discarded electronics. I have a roughly 10-year-old Toshiba laptop which I'll be using as a master node. For worker nodes, I've been slowly collecting old android phones.
The master node will be directly connected via ethernet to our home's router. Then using a USB to Ethernet adapter, I'll connect to the cluster's subnet. To the router, I'm also going to attach an old laptop 1Tb SATA drive for network storage. It would be too costly to get micro c to ethernet adapters, so all nodes will be connected to the router wirelessly. What do you recommend?
 


I'm not sure where you are at but in in the US it is easy to find an old wireless routers. I think just about any router would work.....
 
I've actually decided to go a completely different way. But this has actually created new problems. Instead of using any android products, I've decided to go with inexpensive mini computers. These come with 1 RJ45 Gigabyte port and 1 RJ45 2.5 Gigabyte Port. Thinking back to the cluster I helped build 20+ years ago, we used a router to set Master Node 0 outside the subnet and Nodes 1-? behind the router. Haven't found a router that I could afford, but I did find an unmanaged switch that's 1G, 2.5G, 5G, and 10G compatible.

But I see potential bottlenecks. The Master Node 0 will be connected to the internet via a 1G connection. I've looked at a replacement cable modem, and the fastest I can find is 6G, and even that has only one 2.5G RJ45 jack. The reason I mention all that is... Recently Xfinity announced (or I heard on the news they did) that they're moving to a 1G network as their "low end". It's only a matter of time before Cox and Spectrum (which I use) will either match or attempt to beat them. I just don't have the experience to know if this switch will do what I want it to do efficiently enough. That's for the slave nodes and the master to all talk to each other the fastest way possible.
 
You would need to look a backplane specs to determine if it meets your need. I would suspect you could get something like a cisco 3750 on ebay that will work for what you are doing. I'm guessing the systems NIC cards and cpu that you are using will end up being a bigger bottleneck. Without understanding the application and data specs it would be hard to make any real decision on what you need. Sounds like you are experimenting at this point so I would make a build with what you have and see if you can make it work. You can improve you hardware once you have a working build.
 

Members online


Top