General network requirements

Table of contents:

• Network requirements

• Switches and routers

• DHCP server

• Firewall

• Typical organization of the network environment

Network requirements

1. The Server and client PCs should be on the same local network. For example, 10.10.1.1. Having the Server PC and the client PCs on different local networks like 192.168.1.1 and 10.10.1.1. is not acceptable. We also recommend that you separate the network of the server and gaming PCs on the SENET Boot system from other local networks and devices. It is highly advised to separate Client PC's and Server PC into separate VLAN (Layer 2) and Subnet (Level 3), on modern hardware the process usually automatically creates subnet while separating VLANs but we do recommend additional checks to ensure both systems work. In the end you will get a result of having 2 separate networks. One for Server and clients and another for Wi-Fi and other devices. 

   VLAN 10 - 192.168.10.0/24 (Server and clients)

   VLAN 20 - 192.168.20.0/24 (Wi-Fi, other devices) 

   This allows to split traffic between networks and keep their performance higher. This also allows separating DHCP servers for each network which will put additional wall between diskless system traffic and everything else keeping performance and stability high. 

2. The bandwidth of the network card for the server should provide a connection speed of at least 200 Mbps for 1 client PC. That is, if there are 5 client PCs in the network, the connection speed on the server must be at least 1 GB, if there are 50 client PCs, then 10 GB is required, and so on.

3. For gaming PCs, you should choose a network card with a speed of 1 Gbps.

🔎 To balance the load on the network, it is possible to use several network connections from the server to the switch. In this case, SENET Boot will connect client PCs one by one to each of them (Round Robin), distributing the load more evenly. If the server PC is running Windows Server, we recommend using the built-in "Link Aggregation" feature together with aggregation on the switch (usually LACP), as the "Switch Independent" mode can overload the network.

Switches and routers

1. The network switch must have a minimum speed of 1 Gbps.

2. If you are using a "smart" network switch, you need to disable the "flow control" option in its settings, which reduces the speed of diskless boot speed. We recommend CISCO and HUAWEI network switches.

3. You can also use unmanaged network switches such as TP-link, Toto-link, Pro-link, D-Link. They do not require additional settings.

4. You can use a standard or more powerful router, which determines the Internet speed. In this case, your router must have a QoS function. It will allow you to use a network bandwidth monitoring tool to check the load, which is currently active on a particular system.

5. It is important to have support for CAT-5, CAT-5e, and CAT-6 cables. But we recommend using CAT-5e and CAT-6 cables because CAT-5 cable has a far-end crosstalk (FEXT) problem, that can lead to packet loss.
    

DHCP server

1. The system can work either with the built-in SENET Boot DHCP server or with an existing one in your network. You can choose which server to use at your discretion, but using the SENET Boot DHCP server simplifies system management.

Firewall

1. If a firewall is in place, we recommend whitelisting our domain *.enes.tech to ensure the system works properly.

2. Additionally if you have a firewall device in your network or are using a firewall feature on the router we recommend ensuring that next list of Ports and Protocols are open in your rule set:

   Service	Protocol	Port	Purpose
   DHCP	UDP	67/68	Assigns IP and PXE boot instructions
   PXE Boot	UDP	4011	Boot server communication
   TFTP	UDP	69	Transfers boot files
   iSCSI	TCP	3260	Streams OS disk image
   NFS	TCP/UDP	2049	Image or file system access
   HTTP / HTTPS	TCP	80/443	Admin panel / updates
   Game Update Services	TCP	8110	Game/Content updates

Typical organization of the network environment