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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!inferno.mpx.com.au!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.ysu.edu!neoucom.edu!ns.mcs.kent.edu!kira.cc.uakron.edu!odin.oar.net!malgudi.oar.net!caen!msunews!netnews.upenn.edu!dsinc!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!iglou!heathers.stdio.com!heathers.stdio.com!not-for-mail From: risner@heathers.stdio.com (James Risner) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: PPP and SLIP: ISP Quality? Date: 31 Jan 1996 10:44:35 -0500 Organization: Image Tech Computing Lines: 69 Message-ID: <4eo2p3$p5h@heathers.stdio.com> References: <4eevr4$7no@news.voicenet.com> <DLvoKx.H9M@ritz.mordor.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: heathers X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Chris Mauritz (ritz@ritz.mordor.com) wrote: : 5150 (5150) wrote: : : : : people seem to be reporting lots of problems with PPP in FreeBSD. : : : : are the Linux versions any better? : : : Anyone doing this for real uses a terminal server, not a unix : box. By the time you buy the proper hardware to get an Intel : box to be able to handle 16-32 connections, you have spent : more time and money than you would if you had just sprung for : a Portmaster. I am doing it right now for PPP network connection with a 386-40, 8 meg, 500 meg disk. I JUST upgraded from 4 meg to 8 meg (it was badly needed) The 500 meg is used for a NFS volume of PC 1.44 meg virtual disks that I can "rawrite" when I need. It runs active 4 PPP links using 15% of the CPU (while doing PRED1 compression on all link) It is solid, I never have to play with it once I configure a PPP account. I have only one small problem and that is a tendency to lose 2 packets for about every 40 packets sent. I do not yet know if this is a problem with FreeBSD, the user's machines, or the modems. I am buying a specialx 8 port card to expand (I have 8 new lines planned and I am maxed at 4 with com1-4, irq 4,3,2,9) Used specialx = $100 Spare 386/40 + 8 meg value = $240 Case + hard disk, cards and rest = $200 $540 for 12 ports. $45 a port. You could still do it for $990 with a NEW 486-dx2-80 and a 8 port digiboard new for a $82 per port cost. I would rather use a spare unused shelf PC, than bout a portmaster and worry if it is supported for my users. Or maybe, I am just unix-centric. And on the are the linux better, Linux uses IP firewall code FROM FreeBSD. Linux network code is self pronounced to be slow, and benchmarks in at about 33% of FreeBSD's speed. Linux has a larger user base. Linux has more multiport card support. Linux context switches slowly (unless your using the 1.3.57+ kernel where this issue is resolved) Linux filesystem performance is faster (not much of a boost when all the work is over network and/or serial lines) because of tradeoffs made by Linux and not used by any other UNIX system for reliability reasons. Personally I tried to get Linux to work around April with 1.2.8 and could not get it working without huge (5 to 20 second) lag on telnet packets when ping and UDP traffic was not slowed down. I could not find out WHY this was happening. The only reason I was using Linux is that I was using a MFM disk 40 meg with 250K of bad sectors at the time and FreeBSD did not work with bad sectors on the disk at the time. That was fixed in a 2.1 snap around 7/26/95. Risner