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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!metrics.com!tomh From: tomh@metrics.com (Tom Haapanen) Subject: Re: BSDI vs Win NT and netscape commerce server Organization: Software Metrics Inc. Message-ID: <DJszFL.2z1@metrics.com> References: <4aku63$4bd@news.nstn.ca> <4aoi41$p4r@news.voicenet.com> <4astg7$n1d@news.enterprise.net> Date: Mon, 18 Dec 1995 22:21:21 GMT Lines: 41 apc@enterprise.net (Adrian Cooper) writes: > Well actions speak louder than words! Question - What O/S did M$ > themselves select for their own network of Windows 95 customer > support, Netscape Server based, World Wide Web servers? Answer - BSDI > 2.0 of course! Now, I've been using BSDI since 1993, and I moderate the .bsdi.announce group (when someone bothers to post something there, that is). I think BSD/OS is a wonderful system, and it continues to run our main Internet hub, omega.metrics.com. However, Windows NT shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. While Microsoft did indeed use BSDI for a while, now that their Internet Information Server is in beta, their web servers are running NT. You can check this for yourself by telnetting into the HTTP port. The Microsoft web site gets pretty heavy traffic (2.5M hits/day is a heavy load, at least on my scale), NT has threads built into the OS, supports a wide variety of hardware such as SMP, Fast Ethernet NICs and fast-wide SCSI hosts, and has built-in support for software RAID and disk duplexing. It's not a toy, and it's definitely a worthy candidate for a lot of Internet server-type tasks. The final kicker is that software costs less. Netscape Commerce Server costs less than half the Unix version's price for NT, and Microsoft appears to be planning to give IIS away for free with NT Server. That tends to nullify the cost savings of going with BSDI or even FreeBSD. Still, NT is not Unix. It doesn't have a shell interface, it doesn't have strong scripting facilities and support for some of the Internet protocols is still missing. If you need these, NT is not for you. It's important to understand which OS can do the best job for a given set of requirements, and to keep religious arguments out of business and technical decisions. -- [ /tom haapanen -- tomh@metrics.com -- software metrics inc -- waterloo, ont ] [ "any sufficiently advanced technology ] [ is indistinguishable from magic" -- arthur c. clarke ]