*BSD News Article 71062


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD suitable as Fileserver OS?
Date: 16 Jun 1996 08:52:28 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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spfarrel@midway.uchicago.edu (Steve Farrell) wrote:

> some people have replied with answers about freebsd FTP server, but i'd
> like to hear some comments on NFS server -- these are quite different
> things!

They are not too different.  You're benefiting from a good VM
subsystem with its merged VM/buffer cache that lets your file system
buffer cache grow up to a considerable amount of RAM if the machine is
otherwise idle (i.e. does only/mostly serve NFS files).  You are also
benefiting from a good system load behaviour, i.e. you can start a
bunch of concurrent nfsiod's to support outbound connections, where
the context switch overhead is not too heavy.

Finally, you can rely on a networking subsystem that has already left
its ``green years'' far behind.

Of course, if you put a NE2000 card into the machine, everything is
moot. :-)  For ISA, WD8013 or a Lance-based card are good choices,
for PCI, everybody will point you to the DEC-21040-based cards which
are produced by several vendors.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)