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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 125 responses total. |
mdw
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response 85 of 125:
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Nov 2 05:54 UTC 1998 |
I've got a solaris box on my desk at work. It's certainly fast, and
there are nice things about solaris from the programming end (the kernel
threads, for instance). On the other hand, I know the U has had
significant vandal problems with its solaris based login service. So I
definitely wouldn't consider switching to solaris a no brainer from the
security standpoint, and I think it makes a lot of sense for us to wait
while other people go through the "debugging" pains.
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rtg
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response 86 of 125:
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Nov 3 07:40 UTC 1998 |
WHile surfing today, I came upon a note that Ameritech is now offering
ADSL service, in ANn Arbor only, for about $60 per month. This is a
dedicated full-time 8M/640k service. Even though the rates are skewed
the wrong way for our traffic, 640k is still 5 times our current speed,
for about the same price.
Hayes is selling an ADSL PCI card for a windows box for $299. 3COM has
an ADSL router with 4-port 10baseT hub builtin, but I couldn't find a
price. Think we could get an ADSL router for close to what we could
sell our two pipelines for?
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keesan
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response 87 of 125:
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Nov 3 20:30 UTC 1998 |
Richard, could you explain some of this to a dummy, such as ADSL, 8M/640K and
PCI card?
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scg
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response 88 of 125:
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Nov 3 21:15 UTC 1998 |
Ameritech's ADSL service wouldn't fit Grex's needs very well. It only comes
with one IP address, which may be dynamically assigned (I'm not sure about
that, though). It's a very fast connection to Ameritech and possibly to their
web cache, but not likely to be a very good connection to the rest of the
world.
The ADSL technology itself does look quite nice, and once ISPs other than
Ameritech start offering it in this area it will certainly be something worth
looking at. I'm guessing, though, that the standard home user cheap ADSL
connection will never be very well suited for Grex's needs, since Grex's needs
are different from those of a typical home Internet user.
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mdw
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response 89 of 125:
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Nov 4 06:03 UTC 1998 |
Grex has about the same amount of traffic going into grex as goes out.
The traffic that goes out of grex goes all over the world. Grex will
have multiple machines with multiple IP addresses.
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scg
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response 90 of 125:
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Nov 4 06:20 UTC 1998 |
Yes, but an asymetric connection with 384K out and 1.5M in would still be
better for us than a connection that is 128K in both directions, since 384K
is bigger than 128K. The asymmetry of ADSL doesn't bother me that much. The
other problems are problems with ameritech.net's current ADSL offering, and
not with the technology itself. Whenever it becomes easy for other ISPs to
offer ADSL service, I expect the other limitations will go away, for a price.
Grex actually probably could get by with only one IP address visible to the
outside world, using NAT (network address translation), if we had to. It
wouldn't work as well as our current setup, and isn't anything we have a
reason to seriously consider, but it could be made to work if needed.
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mdw
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response 91 of 125:
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Nov 4 06:35 UTC 1998 |
One word for nat. "yuck".
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rtg
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response 92 of 125:
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Nov 4 07:32 UTC 1998 |
ANother word for nat is ip-masquerade. I had it working on my Linux box
for about a year. There were a few non-transparencies.
Sindi: I'll send you e-mail, rather than tie up this conference with
definitions.
I hadn't heard the 384k/1.5M numbers. Is that Ameritech's offering?
the 640k/8M was from the 'modem' vendor's specs.
I was guessing that the residential offering would have one IP address,
although it's a dedicated, full-time connection, so I assume the address
is fixed. They probably offer a block of IP addrs in their 'business'
offering at a higher price.
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valerie
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response 93 of 125:
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Nov 4 13:15 UTC 1998 |
This response has been erased.
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remmers
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response 94 of 125:
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Nov 4 21:09 UTC 1998 |
"All I want for Christmas is a fixed IP address..."
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janc
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response 95 of 125:
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Nov 6 02:46 UTC 1998 |
Re resp:84: My guess is that Grex's next operating system will be
Linux or NetBSD. First, we need the capability to do kernel
modifications. We can do this with SunOS only because it is closely
enough related to the publicly available BSD source to enable us to
guess how to do things, and confirm our guesses by poking through the
symbol table. I think this is going to be much more painful with
Solaris.
The same goes for any other closed-source Unix that is sufficiently
more advanced than SunOS to make switching to it worth the bother.
About the only way I see us ever changing to Solaris is if Sun
decides to go open-source. That wouldn't shock me, but I wouldn't
hold my breath either.
Among the open-source unixes, Linux is the one with the hottest
development community. Progess is probably the fastest there.
However the S/Linux web site indicates that Linux doesn't run yet
on the 4/670. However, the S/Linux web site hasn't been updated for
about a year. On the other hand, the current NetBSD/sparc release
looks like it would run on our machine. Dunno how well. I suspect
neither is going to be ready for us any time soon, but if we ever
get a set of spare 4/670 hardware, it would be worth experimenting
with them.
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steve
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response 96 of 125:
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Nov 10 04:12 UTC 1998 |
Two words: Open BSD.
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jared
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response 97 of 125:
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Nov 13 08:27 UTC 1998 |
re 82, 83
i've heard the oposite from folks @ u of m, they have turned
sunos machines past y2k and back, and had bad things happen.
although immediateley the datastructures don't have an issue until 2039
(or something like that, because of time_t), lots of other things
are reported to break.
as 96 says, openbsd.
grab yourself a p2 350 w/ 256M ram, and a good scsi card for
under $1500.
install OpenBSD
hack your kernel
then oh no, you've got yourself a machine that will burry this one
w/ standard components that you can buy locally rather than
scouring the net for, and you eliminate a slew of problems.
|
i
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response 98 of 125:
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Nov 14 01:35 UTC 1998 |
My impression is that Linux/x86 is a very cool "toy", but hasn't got what
it takes for real production use - it responds poorly to heavy system
loads, is generally less secure/stable, etc. How similar is the current
Linux/SPARC? (And what does the future seem to hold?)
I've heard many good things about FreeBSD/x86 as a cheap, reliable, etc.
solution *in limited, controlled environments*. I think staff's already
looking at *BSD/x86 systems as specialty processors to take some of the
load off grex itself (mail handling, etc.).
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mdw
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response 99 of 125:
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Nov 14 02:10 UTC 1998 |
I'd want to know a *lot* more about those "folks at UM" before I drew
any conclusions. For instance, if they had AFS installed, AFS is likely
to get quite upset if the time on the server is different than the time
on the workstation. Too many of the sunos machines here have NFS --
similar problems.
I think we can survive until 18 jan 2038. By then, yes, we certainly
should be off of sunos, and multiple hardware generations away from the
670.
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hhsrat
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response 100 of 125:
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Jan 2 03:25 UTC 1999 |
I beta-tested the Ameritech ADSL service. While it is much faster than
my 28.8 modem, it was prone to frequent outages. About once every 2
weeks, it went down for at least 8 hours.
The "modem" that Ameritech gave us was very noisy. Every 6 hours or so,
a very loud, high pitched, fan would turn on. While this may not be
much of a problem in a place such as the Pumpkin which is filled with
computer equipment, it did get to be a little bit of a problem because
my computer is in my bedroom.
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dpc
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response 101 of 125:
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Jan 2 17:49 UTC 1999 |
Wow! Sounds like ADSL isn't ready for prime time yet.
Approximately where do you live, hhsrat? I'm thinking that maybe those
outages are only for one part of Ameritech's ADSL service area.
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hhsrat
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response 102 of 125:
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Jan 3 16:51 UTC 1999 |
It was a few months ago, they might have fixed some problems since then.
Ann Arbor - near Central Campus
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rtg
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response 103 of 125:
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Jan 12 05:03 UTC 1999 |
what interface does the 'modem' present to the PC?
What operating system & software did you use to communicate with it?
--I'm quite interested if there's any hope of talking to it from a Linux
box.
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hhsrat
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response 104 of 125:
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Jan 13 03:21 UTC 1999 |
There is an internal card, which connects via cable to the external
modem. I used Win95, and it was set up like a standard modem, it came
with it's own drivers.
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jshafer
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response 105 of 125:
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Jan 14 22:49 UTC 1999 |
OK, people. I know it's been a while, but I'm trying to catch up:
what was the outcome of the ICnet debate? I'm sure it's here
somewhere, but it would be nice to have a resolution in
this item...
Thanks...
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aruba
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response 106 of 125:
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Jan 14 23:41 UTC 1999 |
After the board voted to drop the link, we debated it a while longer and then
decided to go ahead and do it. We stopped paying ICNET in October.
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jshafer
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response 107 of 125:
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Jan 19 04:41 UTC 1999 |
Thanks, Mark.
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dang
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response 108 of 125:
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Feb 3 18:14 UTC 1999 |
Re: ADSL: I have ADSL. (I'm connected through them right now) They have
a new modem, that makes no noise what so ever, and has no fan. The
service is very reliable and very fast. The connection to my computer
is via and ATM card (Classical IP over ATM25, to be precise) and it is
not yet available on Linux. It's being worked on. The official OS is
win 95, but Efficient has drivers for 98 and NT as well.
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hhsrat
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response 109 of 125:
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Feb 4 01:20 UTC 1999 |
what's the monthly cost? Are you using the Ameritech ADSL service?
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