Hi I have 2 network switches
Switch 1 Contains: IP Cameras
Switch 2 Contains: Client PC's, printers and Internet
IP Cameras use alot of bandwidth
I have a Dell power edge 2950 server that has 2 network connection ports and want these 2 connections to connect to the 2 seperate switches and then share these 2 connections over the network.
Is this the best scenario to do this?
What's it called what I'm trying to achieve?
What exactly do you mean by "share" the two connections? If you want hosts on either switch to communicate to the hosts on the other switch through the server, you would have to at the very minimum enable IP forwarding or for more control, install the RRAS role on your server so it can route packets between them.
If you want the IP cameras to be able to access the Internet through the server, through the second switch connected to an Internet router, you would have to conigure additional routing information on the edge router about the camera subnet so that the returning packets would make it back into that subnet from the Internet.
Resources:
Enable IP Forwarding on Windows Server
LAN Routing Using RRAS on Windows Server
Maybe he means something along the lines of how a Linux server would do this, where the network resource would be mounted to the server, then the mounted filesystem could be shared from the server? Don't think you can do that with windows server. RRAS as JorgeM mentioned would be the solution there.
Hi Jorge,
What I mean by share its like bridging the connections but with network discovery, ill try what you stated above and see if that creates the outcome I'm after.
Cheers thanks!
If your goal is to bridge the connections and remaining a logical subnet it probably makes most sense to simply plug switch 2 into a port on switch 1. Having a windows box for the purpose of bridging will introduce unnecessary complication and possible unreliability in my opinion. The traffic is switched so traffic on one port inst going to affect all ports unless it broadcast based and if it is the windows computer with bridged interfaces isn't going to mitigate that issue.
Ahk cool makes sense, that's what I started to think. Ok thanks for your help and assistance I'm abit of a noob when it come to servers and reducing traffic in a network but have a basic understanding.
Ill give it a go with reconnecting the network properly and see what the outcome is like.
Thanks everyone for your help
Unless the cameras feed only the local server, I'd connect a router to the internet connection, then plug both switches, and the local server, into the router.
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