Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!encore!pinocchio.encore.com
From: jdarcy@pinocchio.encore.com (Jeff d'Arcy)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: fad computing
Message-ID: <10446@encore.Encore.COM>
Date: 25 Nov 89 14:05:00 GMT
References: <89Nov25.051946est.2233@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Sender: news@Encore.COM
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rayan@cs.toronto.edu (Rayan Zachariassen):
> 	The disadvantage that is always brought up as a counter argument
> 	is ROBUSTNESS.  Well, surprise surprise, a distributed environment
> 	is just as fragile as a centralized one with the same functionality
> 	(that's the consensus around here after years of observation), but
> 	it is MUCH more complex.  Centralized environments can be made
> 	very robust if well thought out.

I'v heard this one time and time again, usually in the form "if my workstation
goes down one person is unable to work; it the central computer goes down then
nobody can work".  If each workstation is down 2% of the time and the central
computer is down 1% (unreasonably large figures, I  know), this argument falls
flat on its face.  Given that large systems are more likely than small ones to
be administered by people who know what they're doing, and also that they live
in a better environment (UPS, A/C, etc.), workstations ar probably down *more*
than twice as much as larger hosts.

There's also the issue of backups, and the possibility of a misconfigured
workstation spitting up on the network or otherwise acting antisocially.  In
general I think that a bunch of medium-sized hosts (large Vaxen, Multimaxes,
Symmetries) and a plethora of X-terms is the best way to go for *most*
environments.

Jeff d'Arcy     OS/Network Software Engineer     jdarcy@encore.com
  Encore has provided the medium, but the message remains my own


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