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From: michaelv@MindBender.HeadCandy.com (Michael L. VanLoon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.solaris,comp.unix.aix
Subject: Re: ISP hardware/software choices (performance comparison)
Date: 10 Jan 1996 06:18:27 GMT
Organization: HeadCandy Associates... Sweets for the lobes.
Lines: 39
Distribution: inet
Message-ID: <MICHAELV.96Jan9221827@MindBender.HeadCandy.com>
References: <4cmopu$d35@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: mindbender.seanet.com
In-reply-to: mstary@prairienet.org's message of 6 Jan 1996 21:15:42 GMT
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:1878 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:2022 comp.unix.solaris:56826 comp.unix.aix:68371
In article <4cmopu$d35@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> mstary@prairienet.org (stary) writes:
I have a dilemma about the hardware that I should use for my ISP/WWW
site (www, ftp, ppp/slip, news, pop....). After some research and
after reading the Inet-access FAQ a couple of times, I get very
contradicting evidence on what h/w I should use. I have considered and
analyzed three different platforms (from a raw CPU performance point of
view):
(1) Sun-SunOS, Solaris,
(2) IBM PPCs - AIX, Solaris ppc
(3) Pentium P5/P6 - BSD (I, net), x86 Solaris
[tons of data deleted...]
I'm not going to quote any hard numbers, but am just going to say that
you won't be disappointed with a high-end PC (P5/P6) with a BSD on it.
The performance is very good, and is excellent for the money spent.
An Intel chip will never touch a top-end Alpha, but that's not the
hardware we're talking about. And, we're also not talking about
non-stop floating point number crunching (something else RISC chips
generally excel at). For general use a 133MHz Pentium, or something
faster, is going to be untouchable in the same cost class.
Personally, I'd recommend NetBSD, just because I'm biased. But the
FreeBSD guys also have a good story to tell with respect to
ftp.cdrom.com, one of the busiest servers on the Internet, which is a
Pentium running FreeBSD.
Anyway, I'm sure you'll get lots of other advice, much of it
conflicting. Consider this my somewhat-educated input.
--
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Michael L. VanLoon michaelv@HeadCandy.com
--< Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x >--
NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, HP300, Sun3, Sun4,
DEC PMAX (MIPS), DEC Alpha, PC532
NetBSD ports in progress: VAX, Atari 68k, others...
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