Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bu.edu!wang!comm.wang.com!lws From: lws@comm.wang.com (Lyle Seaman) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans Subject: Re: Novell Portable Netware on RISC Platforms? Message-ID: <1990Oct31.175210.9255@comm.wang.com> Date: 31 Oct 90 17:52:10 GMT References: <134@frcs.UUCP> <1990Oct29.205632.15788@Eyring.COM> Organization: Wang Labs, Platform Comms. Lines: 51 ron@Eyring.COM (Ron Holt) writes: >Portable Netware has been ported to MIPS though I don't remember if it >was a DEC or MIPS machine. It was a MIPS machine, they have announced this product in this group, it should be available by the beginning of '91, I gather. >The performance was about the same as >native Netware 386 which was disappointing to hear. The way I heard it, it was faster. Anyway, I think that's pretty good. >I think a RISC machine with PNW should be able to beat the pants off >of Netware 386. >The main bottleneck appears to be with the AT&T >STREAMS code upon which PNW is built. I'm wondering what you base this opinion on. There's not a whole lot to STREAMS. I don't think there really is any particular bottleneck in PNW (if there is, I'd sure like to know it) relative to Native. I think the performance difference can be easily explained by noting that the engineers working on Native NetWare have scraped for every smidgen of performance they can, by eliminating the OS (practically) and every bit of overhead they can find, and by writing Native (almost?) entirely in machine code -- no C for these guys, it's too slow. On the other hand, Portable is written with the distinct goal of being... easy to port to a wide variety of hardware and OSs, not just UNIX. So they haven't been able to design for quite the same degree of performance. Furthermore, UNIX has a LOT of overhead relative to NetWare OS. And there's a lot more going on on a UNIX box (other processes, that is) than under NetWare. The lower performance of Portable is just the price you pay for having a general purpose system that can do other things besides be a NetWare server. BTW, have you seen the performance differences between an ordinary UNIX box and an optimized NFS server? Same situation, only not even as extreme as the difference between Portable and Native. >BTW, don't any Novell guys read this group? I would be nice if they >could help inject some reality into some of these discussions... I am sure they are bound by non-disclosure agreements (if not simply good sense) not to publicize any information on activities by other companies wrt Portable. They are probably bound by their own good sense not to get into comparisons of Portable and Native. -- Lyle Wang lws@comm.wang.com 508 967 2322 Lowell, MA, USA uunet!comm.wang.com!lws The scum always rises to the top.