Beowulf Systems

Ok so first I want to apologize that I put this in the General Section I just didnt know where exactly to post this.

I have been involved for the last 2 years in a project at school, and we have been successful at not getting any further or making much progress. First I would like to give some background info.

We have a total of 25 machines all running linux. They are all connected using the same Network Cards and going into one switch. 24 port linksys or 3comm. (Lack of fundage equates to lack of quality). The machines are all 100-233 machines. They all have a minimum of 64mb or RAM. They are setup so that one Machine is the master node, and the rest take commands from it.

This is a typical beowulf setup, only which ever version we are running isnt working so great. I am hoping some of the knowledgable minds that lurk around AO can help me out. Any recommendations on versions of software or different linux based beowulf setups or ways to increase performance would be greatly apreciated.

We have been testing our results with benchmarks and found that 5 computers running on this version run as well if not better than all 25. If anyone has any ideas about this or solutions I can use would help a whole lot.

I will provide our website for any background info you may need. If it is considered spamming or something please let me know and I will remove it. http://www.clustercomputingresearch.com