SCSI as a network interface

[Scott_Palmer@Dell.com]

The pain of developing such a solution, were it even possible, can't be
worth the money unless you really have a personal interest in making this
work.  There are some SAN-type ideas already out there that might be able to
be modified, but, AFAIK, not without some serious mods.

Cheap 10/100 NIC's can be found for $30, and 100Mbps switches are running
around $50/port.  Cat 5 cabling is cheap, assume $5 per box covers the cable
and connectors, and you're running well under $100 per node.

The price of good SCSI cable and active terminators won't be cheap, and I
wouldn't skimp on that part, esp. considering the likely cable length that
you're going to have.  Don't forget that SCSI stands for (S)ystem (C)an't
(S)ee (I)t, imagine the joy of troubleshooting this system with a bad
terminator....!

Just my two cents.

- Scott 

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Fredrickson [mailto:billf@inxpress.net]
Sent: Monday, May 31, 1999 5:01 PM
To: extreme-linux@acl.lanl.gov; beowulf@beowulf.gsfc.nasa.gov
Subject: SCSI as a network interface


Thanks all for the replies.

Perhaps I should have been a little more specific about my intentions.
I'm looking for a fast, easy way to network a cluster [Beowulf style] of
PC's each of which already  have SCSI controlers in them. When I was
reading through the mail messages I saw what I thought was a reference
to using the SCSI controler as a means of interconnecting the nodes. So,
not being a SCSI expret,  I posted the message in hopes that maybe this
might be a possible way of doing it.  I was hoping to avoid the adtional
cost of NIC cards, switches, etc.

Any thoughts, and/or suggestions would be most appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Bill