*BSD News Article 68334


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From: robin@falstaf.demon.co.uk (Robin Birch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Have you set up a News server?
Date: 11 May 1996 17:38:38 +0100
Organization: Ruff'n Ready
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Message-ID: <4n2fqe$id6@falstaf.demon.co.uk>
References: <4n11cv$k088_002@ca.mdis.com> <4n1m0l$ph6@itchy.serv.net>
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Sean T. Lamont (zeno@serv.net) wrote:
: In article <4n11cv$k088_002@ca.mdis.com>,
: Preston L. Bannister <pbannister@ca.mdis.com> wrote:
: >I'm trying to set up a News server.  
: >What is reasonable hardware for this role?

: I'll assume you're talking about a full feed here. If not,
: the configuration you spec'd may work.

I agree, the significant question is "what do these people want?".  If you
just want, say, 100 groups then what you suggest or INN will work.  Especially
if you are only calling the groups down on demand.
: >
: >We have a 486/66 box with 16 MB RAM, and 1.3 GB of (IDE) disk space allocated 
: Do yourself a favor and get that silly IDE idea out of your head, especially

: Get a PCI-based SCSI controller and *as many* disks with *as fast* seek
: time as your budget can afford; this is what will determine how much
: news you can feed in a day.

Again yes, SCSI is probably the best way to go.  ISA or PCI and ideally have
one card with it's discs dedicated to the news feed.

: >
: >My (inexpert) opinion was that C News and NNTP would be a good fit, with INN 
: >needing more memory to run well, and offering more than we need in terms of 
: >performance.

: >
: >Is C News/NNTP a good choice, or can INN run in "only" 16 meg?

: Once when I had some memory go bad, we ran INN for a couple days
: in 16 meg. It performed quite well, surprisingly.  We backlogged a bit,
: but were still feeding almost 100K articles a day.
: If you want a full feed I would start looking in the 64-128M range,
:  though.

Again, the issue is what do you want.  IF the users only want to access a small
number of groups then this will work.  For instance, I use INN on a 16Meg 
486/100 for home and this works great.  but I only use some 20 groups with
say 500 articles a day.  If you want a lot of groups or something that gets
within 25% (in throughput terms) of a full feed then go for INN, SCSI discs,
and at least 32Meg, possibly 64+.  However, if you are going to do this then
your T1 will be rather busy and you would be loosing some bandwidth that you
are probably using for other stuff like making money.

Cheers

Robin Birch