Hello.

I just bought 8 "windows xp home" and 2 "windows xp pro" to use in a small
render farm but I'm having some network problems.
There are 8 nodes using xp home and a fileserver with xp pro (plus a
workstation also with xp pro where corrently I run the 3dstudio backburner
manager and monitor). The network is Gigabit, the cable are brand new as well
as the lynksys switch
I am aware of the 10 connection limit but althought I don't reach this limit
(at least looking at the result of "netstat -b") I keep loosing connection to
the fileserver.
I can render small scenes with the 8 nodes but for scenes with larger files
(but not that large) I can only render with 3 or 4
There is no problem with the scenes itself because they can render in all
nodes, just not at the same time.
When a node stops rendering (3dstudio just blocks in the part where it
should retrieve bitmaps from the fileserver) I can no longer access the
server files althought I can ping the server.
I don't need any special features for this farm...just to have 8 machines
access a shared folder effeciently.
I really would like to know if there is some limitation in these windows
versions that I'm not aware that is causing this or if it is just some wrong
settings I could have??

Thanks

Check to see if your network cards have power-saving on, and if so deactivate
it.

I've found this feature to be major PITA with lost connections.

Hi Ian. Thanks for the reply
I'm have Asus A8N-VM CSM boards on the nodes and a Asus P4P800-E Deluxe on
the fileserver.
I couldn't find anything refering LAN power saving features
(Althought there's a VCT (Virtual Cable Tester) features in the P4P800 :-))
Any more ideias??

Here are the links
http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?m...3&l2=15&l3=210
http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1...78&modelmenu=1
"Ian" wrote:

> Check to see if your network cards have power-saving on, and if so deactivate
> it.
>
> I've found this feature to be major PITA with lost connections.