Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hoptoad!gnu
From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.aux
Subject: Re: NFS mounting from Macs
Message-ID: <7437@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 26 May 89 04:11:50 GMT
References: <415@wizard.UUCP>
Organization: Grasshopper Group in San Francisco
Lines: 24

john@wizard.UUCP (John Danner) wrote:
> Can someone explain to me why a Mac using the same hard drive as a Sun386i
> might be significantly slower as an NFS server?

The Mac uses the System V filesystem, which is slower than the Berkeley
filesystem used on Suns.  Apple has put some effort into making it
faster for 1.1 (mostly work by Gene Dronek of Vulcan Labs, on contract).
It makes the difference between intolerable and tolerable.

Also, we were unable to find any good Ethernet cards for the NuBus.
The Apple and Kinetics ones both drop packets at the 'drop' of a hat,
especially when they come quickly, like from a Sun-4.  We had to
throttle our Sun-4 WAY back (write and read in 1K rather than 8K chunks
when talking to our A/UX machines) to avoid long hangs.  And this
Sun-4 has the cruddy Intel Ethernet chip, which is quite a bit slower
than the clean AMD LANCE in the newer Suns.

Not even Apple makes a Mac their gateway to the Internet -- they use a
Vax running Berkeley Unix, and recently upgraded it significantly
rather than switch to A/UX.
-- 
John Gilmore    {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid,amdahl}!hoptoad!gnu    gnu@toad.com
  A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
  the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.