*BSD News Article 43304


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From: mdodd@tiger.lsu.edu (Matthew N. Dodd)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.powerpc,comp.sys.intel,comp.unix.bsd,comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.sys5.r4,comp.unix.misc,comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.386bsd.development,comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: flat rates for Internet/phone (Re: X on dial-in)
Followup-To: comp.sys.powerpc,comp.sys.intel,comp.unix.bsd,comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit,comp.unix.sys5.r4,comp.unix.misc,comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.386bsd.development,comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.misc
Date: 9 Mar 1995 00:00:42 -0600
Organization: Louisiana State University
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Distribution: world
Message-ID: <3jm5ia$2078@tiger1.ocs.lsu.edu>
References: <D3s19v.4M7@pe1chl.ampr.org> <phrD4JrEA.2ss@netcom.com> <3iqs6r$j5g@vanbc.wimsey.com> <D4oJtF.43L@pe1chl.ampr.org> <3jaca9$pj@zeus.achilles.net> <3jfqpv$nhd@earth.laitram.com>
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Mark Sutton (marksu@laitram.com) wrote:
: pjlahaie@achilles.net (Paul JY Lahaie) writes:
: I really think that if you expect ANY device to live up to such criteria
: you will be sorely disappointed.

Whats wrong with that?

: I would not expect my car to last very long if I ran the engine at redline
: continuously.

Your car is a whole different set of circumstances.  Besides, your engine
would probably do quite fine running continuously (with periodic 
maintainence) if you ran it in the RPM that it was designed for, rather
than at "the red line".

: Although, a typical 486 or Pentium computer running *IX might have hundreds of
: user accounts, I would not expect it to perform acceptably with 500 users logged
: in simultaneously, all running CPU intensive apps.

It could happen.  Remember the PDP-11s?  512k RAM and it supported
16 or more users... (this isn't quite a fair comparison...)

: Similarly, when the "typical" usage of a telephone switch might be 3 to 5 
: percent, it would be economically ridiculous to design the switch to run
: at 100% capacity 100% of the time.  This would surely result in no one
: being able to afford telephone service!

This running of machines at less than 100% percent is a recent thing.
The old mainframes were run as close to 100% as possible.  They could not
afford to waste the cpu cycles.  The advent of cheap cpu time changed all
this.  When this same thing happens to the phone company, you have to wait
a bit for a dialtone.  The PBX on campus does this right around phone
in class registration.  :)

As someone else said FR is the way to go...

 
-- 
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Matthew N. Dodd                        Department of Computer Science
mdodd@tiger.lsu.edu                        Louisiana State University