*BSD News Article 47343


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From: ritz@ritz.mordor.com (Chris Mauritz)
Subject: Re: Internet service providing-which OS?
Followup-To: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.ms-windows.networking.tcp-ip,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
References: <3ue5qa$ain@panix.com> <id.VAPL1.0SA@nmti.com> <3uhstv$pf@empire.texas.net> <id.GARL1.I6A@nmti.com> <3ukd4q$9h0@kadath.zeitgeist.net>
Organization: Mordor International
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 1995 12:46:08 GMT
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
Message-ID: <DC0M4w.4px@ritz.mordor.com>
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Amancio Hasty, Jr. (hasty@rah.star-gate.com) wrote:
: peter@nmti.com (Peter da Silva) wrote:
: >In article <3uhstv$pf@empire.texas.net>,
: >Joseph R.M. Zbiciak <im14u2c@millenium.texas.net> wrote:
: >> It's certainly possible.  I wouldn't recommend it, however.  At least,
: >> not yet.  Too many PC boxes have suboptimal architectures.  More established
: >> workstation-class machines would probably be better choices, and nowadays,
: >> such machines can be had for the same price as a big PC.
: >
: >I maybe would consider an Alpha-based box, because then you're getting more
: >horsepower than you can get out of a PC, period. But the low end Alpha servers
: >use the same bus as the PCs!

: However, the Alphas can drive the PCI at full speed and I am not sure that
: this matters for an ISP since the bottleneck most likely will be the network
: connection. I would chose FreeBSD or Netbsd on a P90 with a nice PCI 
: adapter Bustek or Adaptec and if you really have to I would tried out Linux.

Actually, on a multiuser machine, I've found that disk IO is the biggest
bottleneck.  The cpu is usually fairly idle.  My setup:

P90
96mb RAM
Buslogic 946C PCI SCSI-2 card
scads of 2mb Barracudas
BSDI OS v1.0
thin ether to Cisco 2500 to T1

Often, with 30+ people logged in the load is well under 0.50 and
top shows the cpu at roughly 80% idle.  Any serious disk activity
sends the load to 1-2 and cpu utilization goes way up as well. :(

: On the traditional workstations, the one objection that I  have is
: support and the lack of sources *freely* available.

Yep.

: Not sure if it matters but my system is also connected to the MBONE .

Cool.  How do you like it?

Regards,

Chris

-- 
Christopher Mauritz         | For info on internet access:
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