Site Planning Workflow
Network Infastructure - General Information

A Scitex network operates in a Client - Server environment which demands high performance throughput between the server and the different clients.
The Scitex network is constructed in a star topology, using switching hubs to connect servers and work stations to the switch.

Stations demanding fast throughput are connected to a dedicated port on the switching hub. Stations requiring a lower bandwidth can be connected to a workgroup hub, which in turn is connected to a port on the switch.

This infrastructure allows for high efficiency and fast data communication both in client-server and Peer to Peer connections.

Where there are a number of switching hubs, the connectivity between the hubs is through a high speed backbone, e.g. FDDI, Fast Ethernet or ATM. Today Scitex supports FDDI.

The network infrastructure should be constructed as a high performance network backbone which includes Ripro Servers connected to Switching Hubs.
The aim is to open a big pipe (wide bandwidth) connection between the Ripro Server and the Switching Hub.

There are three possibilities:

• Open a big pipe between the Ripro Server and the Switching Hub as a backbone, using FDDI, Fast Ethernet or ATM platforms.
• If there is no FDDI/ATM connection available, connect two server ethernet boards to a switching hub. One board communicates AppleTalk only (et0) and the other one communicates TCP/IP only (en1), one communication protocol per board. All other drivers are not available.
• If there is no switching hub available, use the segmentation method. connecting multiple Ethernet boards to the Ripro Server (up to 4 Ethernet boards). This reduces the Ripro network burden.