In article , Lukasz Ponski wrote: :I am looking for a norm specifying the space between computers in a single :room. A room (let's say 16 square meters) is supposed to have the maximum :number of workstations. :Is there any RFC about this issue?
Are you talking about in ethernet terms, or in cooling terms, or in fire regulation terms, in terms of EMF limits, or in psychological terms of how closely you can pack people together without them feeling "crowded" ?
There is no meaningful minimum distance between systems in modern ethernet (unlike the old 10Base2 days.) I seem to recall that there may still be a theoretical limit of 1023 stations per segment, but I don't know if anyone bothers to enforce that, especially considering that if you are using a modern fully-switched full-duplex topology, there are only ever at most 2 stations per segment.
The limits to your cooling capacity depend on what you can afford. If you go to the bother of putting in full raised flooring and a Leibart unit capable of raising a small tornado, or if you go to the trouble of water-cooling everything, you can get a lot more units into a small area than if you have the relatively stagnant air conditions of a typical bedroom. Manufacturers often give guideance about how much space to allow around a system, based upon the assumption that the device will be used in its typical environment (e.g., a home PC in a convection-cooled home, a business PC in an air-conditioned office designed to keep -people- comfortable.) The space recommendations for each model differ. If you have a high-end graphics board or a 3 GHz CPU, then you are going to need more cooling space than if you have an older generation of equipment. A CRT usually needs more cooling than a flat panel display.
Fire regulations vary greatly from area to area, and the most directly applicable fire regulations might prove to be those governing electrical circuit densities; that is going to depend upon the local by-laws and upon the kind of wiring used. Household-quality aluminium wiring isn't going to stand up to as much heat as industry-quality copper wiring.
EMF regulations... you'd have to look at the EU directives for that. Canada [my location] has no regulation corresponding to the EU limits on low-level EMF. The standard that we use at work is that we only allow authorized/trained people into past the 5 Gauss line. That limit isn't because of the effect of magnetic fields on the human body: the limit is for safety, providing a generous margin to be sure that nothing the person happens to be carrying is dragged in to the magnetic field. It is my understanding that the EU does have limits that are grounded in concerns about the possible effects of low-level EMF on the human body.