Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!lupine!ed From: ed@lupine.UUCP (Ed Basart) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: A Thought on X Terminals Summary: Downloading @8:30 Message-ID: <184@lupine.UUCP> Date: 21 Feb 89 05:03:30 GMT References: <19613@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <474@salgado.stan.UUCP> Distribution: comp Organization: Network Computing Devices, Palo Alto, CA Lines: 15 The NCD X station offers either a downloaded server or a server in PROM. Many people are happy that software updates can be handled in a civilized fashion, and choose to purchase the units as download units. The server is downloaded whenever the unit is powered on. There are other people who wish to have the server in PROM, just to avoid such problems as 1000 people powering on their station at 8:30 Monday morning. But this is not a new problem. Diskless workstations have the same problems (and more, due to paging and file access), and the networking community is slowly working this out. For the present, people partition their networks and keep the number of devices to a reasonable level (say 20 to 100) per partition. If you locate a boot machine on each segment (presumably one needs at least one host per 20 to 100 X stations!), then the traffic tie-up as everyone starts her/his station is minimized.