a new network and a newbie admin

[Petrisor Marian <marian.petrisor@siemens.com>]

Hello, I have just been nominated in charge for the network inside the student block I live in. My problem is the server that I will have to order, as the network is not made yet.

The network will have about 130 computers (will not function all at the same time) that will be connected as in the following figure:


                                          
                   _______||||__________________________S_______ISP
                ___|__
      __________||||||      ....................
______|______             ........................
| | | | | | |           ............................
p p p p p p p

each p is a pc, the S is the server

Because of the price we had to use only 8 port switches... =(

My questions are : what should I do to ensure that each computer in the lan will communicate at a very good transfer rate with other lan PCs and have a good transfer rate for browsing the internet?

What would you recommend as proxy software?
I want to give access only to PCs that are registered in a way. How should I do that? DHCP + arp for IPs and permit only registered addresses (IP -MAC pair is registered) ?

Would you recommend anything else?

I would like to limit the transfers on certain types of files (.avi, .mpg, .mp3 ...) in order to ensure browsing not downloading... Is squid the solution?


Is there a software that would permit some kind of download registering list? 
Picture this, one user _really_ wants a song to be downloaded. He registers himself in the list and when the traffic is low the server starts the download and stores the file on the hdd. The place where is put is accessible through ftp and the user can copy it at a later time.

Thank you!

Petrisor Eddy Marian