[Beowulf] ethernet switch, dhcp question

[JOHNSON,PAUL C]

All:

Im fairly new to beowulf clusters so please excuse the question if 
it is trivial.  Ive installed mpich on several computers and have 
run several programs but the performance seems a little slow.  All 
the computers in my lab are connected directly to the campus 
network.  Would I see an increase in performance if I instead had 
slaves connected through a switch in my room connected to a master 
computer using dhcp to assign ip's?
Thanks for any help,
Paul

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JOHNSON,PAUL C