Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!oliveb!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Diskless nodes (was Re: AM(iga un)IX)
Message-ID: <95626@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 23 Mar 89 23:42:07 GMT
References: <72@snll-arpagw.UUCP> <6330@cbmvax.UUCP> <74@snll-arpagw.UUCP> <2421@sbcs.sunysb.edu> <13392@steinmetz.ge.com>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 30

In article <13392@steinmetz.ge.com> (Donald P Perley) writes:
>I am not all that hot on diskless nodes myself.  NFS is great, being able
>to access files all over the place, but remember that you are limited to
>a total of about 1.2 mbyte/sec.  When you start splitting that among
>a large number of stations, it would be nice to at least have memory
>paging on a local disk.

A couple of points about diskless nodes :

	1) Diskless Amigas are 98% the speed of diskfull Amigas because
	   once they are running something they don't swap. Loading and
	   directory scanning is about the same as a non-DMA harddrive. 

	2) The ethernet has never been the bottleneck for diskless nodes.
	   The order link strength is generally Server-CPU, Server-Disk Speed,
	   Ethernet. At Sun we keep improving the Server's CPU and Disk Speed
	   and have yet to get it to the point where either the server or
	   the client was waiting to shove bits over the wire.

The other point you missed (and don't feel bad, most people do) is that
ethernet is not "split" among the various diskless nodes, it is "given"
to them. Thus whenever you need it, you get _all_ 1.2 MBytes/Sec of bandwidth
and don't have to share with anyone. No one makes a disk drive for the 
Amiga yet that can pump out 1.2 Mbytes a second. (Yes they come close,
but still they aren't there yet.)


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.