From: htoaster@yabbs
To: washbord@yabbs
Subject: re: BSD...
Date: Tue Mar 22 10:40:38 1994

In message BSD..., washbord said:
> I'm planning on setting up an 8 line dial-up system running on BSD and
> providing Inet access.  The system will have 1GB HD, and 16 MB of RAM, 
> running on a 486sx-33.  The 56K hook-up hardware is very expensive.  I 

Hardware you will probably be okay, although you may opt for a faster CPU.
Make sure you get a scsi disk as well, disk performance is much better with
them, because they don't tie up the entire system during disk transactions.

Sorry, I don't know a whole lot about 56k costs...

> Also, is Phred's lag caused by its connection, or its hardware?  What 
> speed is the connection anyways?

Phred's connection is through ethernet to the campus T1, which I think is
only one or two hops away from the backbone.  The lag on phred is usually
caused by one of three things:
   1) i'm doing something on the machine that causes the loadavg to go high
      (i've seen it above 5).  usually this isn't the case, and the loadavg
      hovers around .6 or .7.
   2) yabbs uses character by character mode for i/o.  this means that 
      everything that you type is echoed back by my machine.  the reason
      for this is that it makes it a lot easier to make a nice interface
      (like hotkeys, not having the input line get written over in talk,
      etc).  this is mainly a problem for people telnetting from far away
      or through slow links.
   3) our network has been in bad shape recently, and will sometimes drop
      my dorm for periods of about one minute.

alex