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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!hpg30a.csc.cuhk.hk!news.hk.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!darkstar.UCSC.EDU!news.hal.COM!decwrl!vixie!nnrp!vixie From: vixie@gw.home.vix.com (Paul A Vixie) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: What is best UNIX & hardware for ISP? Date: 11 Dec 94 22:08:43 Organization: Vixie Enterprises Lines: 86 Message-ID: <VIXIE.94Dec11220843@gw.home.vix.com> References: <riceD0oLKx.455@netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: gw.home.vix.com In-reply-to: rice@netcom.com's message of Mon, 12 Dec 1994 04:53:21 GMT >I am thinking of setting up a local ISP and would like to get some input >on the best OS and hardware to use for this purpose... Is BSDI worth the >$995 for the source or should I just stick with Linux or FreeBSD (note: I >know nothing about any of these operating systems... any info is >appreciated).. It sounds like you don't need source, so if you get BSDI's offering you should get the binary-only option (less money). On the other hand it sounds like you need support, so unless you have a consultant available or a techno- wizard on your staff, you probably want BSDI over Linux/FreeBSD since you'll want a number you can call when you have trouble. BSDI's support isn't cheap (after the warranty period, that is) but it's a lot cheaper than a technowizard on your staff, or a consultant charging you by the hour. >What is the hardware best suited for this? Should I go for a P90 or stick >with a 486/66? The P5-90 runs like the wind, much faster than any Sun I've ever used and definitely faster than a 486DX2. On the other hand, ISP tends to be an IO- limited business, and a 486DX2 can drive your modems and hard drives as fast as they'll go. Figure that either one will work for now, and that you will likely be buying more systems in the future so either one will have a place later on, too. Probably the bigger concern is what IO bus you use for your disk and network IO. I recommend EISA, as ISA is too slow and PCI is too... well... flakey. VLB works great for video but stay away from it for SCSI. >How much RAM and disk space (IDE or SCSI?) should I begin with? Skip IDE. It tops out at ~550MB unless you get new "enhanced IDE" which is not widely supported by the Intel BSD's. SCSI is way cheap -- 1GB @$650 or better. Figure a 1GB drive for a system disk and then as many 2GB drives as you figure you'll need -- one for news, then N for ????. >Which Multi-port board should I go for? For sheer port density you can't beat Digiboard (64 ports per slot). If you decide to use a multiport serial board rather than a separate terminal server (and I always recommend against terminal servers in these applications), then you should start by figuring out how many modems per system you will need, divide by the number of slots you have available for this purpose, and then find out which boards supported by the operating system will give that number or more. Note that Digiboard has an EISA version of their board, and even though my back-of-envelope calculations tell me that ISA is good enough for 64 ports, I use the EISA board and have had no trouble with it on at least three different systems now. >Is the RISCom/N2 good if I go with BSD/OS or should I go for an external >router (If the former, should I get the N2-S or N2-D?) ? I've had mixed results with the RISCom/N2. On two 486DX2 systems I've put in, it runs like a hose (that is, it works well). On one P5-90 I put in, it fails periodically and the system needs to be rebooted to clear the board's state. (Naturally the P5-90 was a cheap motherboard that I hadn't had time to test in my shop before delivering it to the customer -- there's a lesson for me.) If you expect to go at T3 rates to your provider, or sell more than a handful of T1 lines to your customers, you will need an external router, and for external routers I always use Cisco. But if you just want to do four or less T1's, I like the integrated router-server concept. You should still use seperate boxes for your IO-intensive stuff (news, shell access), but being able to hang modems off the same box that does T1 seems very neat and clean to me. PPP in, T1 out, no fuss, no muss, no ethernet hop -- that it, until you are so big that all your modems and T1's won't fit on the same box, and then you're in for some hops but at least it won't happen on *every* packet. >Should I go for Rackmount modems or just regular externals? How many? Figure your modems will be used by about 15% of your user population at any one time. So if you have 150 users, you will need 10 modems or folks will start to get busy signals and compare you to Netcom which would be bad. If you have dollars to burn, the USR "Total Control" rackmount system has the best port density (per rack inch) I've ever seen, and they are really neat and clean and easy to maintain. If you want to do it cheaply, get a used Telebit rack (or several) or buy standalone AT&T Dataport 14.4 modems. >Any help with this is GREATLY appreciated! Good luck and let us all know how it turns out. Note that BSD-based service provision is not for the faint of heart, but then neither is service provision in general. -- Paul Vixie La Honda, CA <paul@vix.com> decwrl!vixie!paul