Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!pcg
From: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: diskless NeXT? (was Re: Announcement vs reality)
Keywords: Next
Message-ID: <269@aber-cs.UUCP>
Date: 24 Nov 88 22:12:46 GMT
References: <17846@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <3638@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <28185@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <267@aber-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Distribution: eunet,world
Organization: CS Dept., University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK
Lines: 45
X-Disclaimer: Any statement is purely personal.

In article <267@aber-cs.UUCP> pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
writes:

    In article <28185@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
    bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) writes:

	[ suggests that to secure machines on a net you restrict the
	ability of users to boot from local disks, etc...]

    [ I comment that this is a badly misguided approach to the problem,
    and add some flames on a cathegory of sysadmins that draw the gun
    whenever a problem threatens their "control" ]

I would like to add a couple of points;

    bob@allosaur is obviously a knowledgeable UNIX user; I did not mean to
    include him in class of sysadmins targeted by my flames.

    It is my strong, strong impression that the NeXT is designed for the
    Andrew environment; NeXTs are meant to be slef service workstations,
    into which anybody can put their removable disk, upload (parts of) it
    to a fast server, work, adn then dump things back to the floppy. This
    explains both the absence of a fast disk, and the essential role of a
    removable backup, which if able to provide random access much better as
    personal repository, from/to which parts are copied to a remote server.
    A tape would have meant saving and restoring its contents in their
    entirety to a server.

In this view it is obvious that workstations are NOT trusted at all;
they may be used for whatever purpose, even os development; it is
trusted servers and end-to-end links that must be protected by
encryption and encryption based authentication.

To suggest that the NeXT is the machine FOR students is ok, as long as
this is meant as to provide service for the students, not for students
to own. I can assure everybody that a 95 ms. disk makes a standalone
UNIX machine unbearable (I did once run a 386 UNIX 5.3 on an AT clone
with a 3.5" hard disk with that despicable access time, and even with
nearly two megabytes of file system cache thins were pretty glib; thank
goodness it was only temporary). Even a 40ms disk is not really enough.
You must go down to 25-28ms to get quite respectable performance.
-- 
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi			INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk
Sw.Eng. Group, Dept. of Computer Science	UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
UCW, Penglais, Aberystwyth, WALES SY23 3BZ (UK)