Hi folks, I have about 10 or 12 machines crunching Rosetta for us when they are not in use. One of the things I would like to be able to do is designate a single machine as the "host" whereby all internet traffic goes through that one machine (uploading/downloading WU's etc..)

Is this possible? I'm in a Windows environment.

Thanks,

-Ford

Yes but there are a number of different ways to approach the problem. The best way would be to get a switch with sufficient ports to handle all the machines, and connect the switch to the internet.

Second best would be to build a daisy chain by networking the computers to each other, and set up one system to share it's connection to the internet.

Unfortunately, my only way to do this is with software. For a number of reasons I am unable to modify the hardware infrastructure of my machines.

Thanks for the reply though!

Been poking around the internet to try to find a free way to do this and I'm wondering if I set up one machine as a proxy server and configured the rest to use the proxy server to connect - would that work? (Tools > Internet Options > Connections > LAN Settings). Would BOINC use this?

How are the machines connected? What OS(es) are involved? And what type of internet connection are you trying to share?

Windows has had ICS abilities for awhile - and some of my customers have used it - but I've always recommended having a hardware firewall or router for networked machines. (So you don't accidently share your private folders to everyone on the internet - which is one of the things Nimda did.) Async routers for dialup connections were useful for the dialup customers.

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One of the things I would like to be able to do is designate a single machine as the "host" whereby all internet traffic goes through that one machine (uploading/downloading WU's etc..)

You did not state if you needed "host" to actually handle BOINC's protocol, only that you needed to channel "internet traffic" through one machine witch I considered TCP/IP as in "internet traffic".


You could use a SOCKS proxy, which BOINC has support for internaly. Look in the menu item advanced, then the sub-item options. Click the SOCKS tab on the dialog.
You can find quite a few software packages that provide a SOCKS proxy, one one computer which would be the one you want the internet traffic routed through. Also, configuring a SOCKS daemon is very easy just ensure by testing on a friends computer that someone outside of your private network can not utilize the daemon therefore presenting a security problem.

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How are the machines connected? What OS(es) are involved?

Windows XP and 2003. Multiple floors at work, of which I am not responsible for the network topology (100Mbit copper, multiple switches between them). I work for a software company that develops distributed compute technology of our own, and I'm sharing the hardware's resources when they aren't being used. However, it's good for everyone if I don't have 6 compute boxes showing up on their log files once a day..

You could use a SOCKS proxy, which BOINC has support for internaly. Look in the menu item advanced, then the sub-item options. Click the SOCKS tab on the dialog.
You can find quite a few software packages that provide a SOCKS proxy, one one computer which would be the one you want the internet traffic routed through. Also, configuring a SOCKS daemon is very easy just ensure by testing on a friends computer that someone outside of your private network can not utilize the daemon therefore presenting a security problem.

Ahhhh! Now this sounds promising! :) Thanks for the tip!

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Team Starfire World BOINC

Got it working! I downloaded a free socks server called "Socks Puppet" from here:

http://socks.pendulus.net/download.html

Set it up as a windows service on my primary machine, and configured all my BOINC hosts to use that. Works great, all my BOINC traffic now goes through a single host.

Thanks for the help!

-Ford

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Team Starfire World BOINC

Deleted - you got it working already.

:)

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