Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 21:22:19 +0000 From: "Frank Pawlak" <fpawlak@execpc.com> To: Studded <Studded@san.rr.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: RTFM Message-ID: <980530212219.ZM4908@darkstar.connect.com> In-Reply-To: Studded <Studded@san.rr.com> "Re: RTFM" (May 30, 12:46pm) References: <356CA20F.1F47@clarityconnect.com> <980528041610.ZM1327@darkstar.connect.com> <35706214.119D02EB@san.rr.com>
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Hi Doug, Thanks for your response. At the risk of embarrassment due to my ignorance, I have to ask you to elaborate on a point you made. The Linux Kernel was designed for 256 fd's, I am not clear on what this means. Could you please define that in terms that a technically challenged person, me, could understand? If I could beg on your good graces a bit more, I am also under the impression that the TCP/IP stack in Linux is inferior to that implemented in FreeBSD. Is there any substance to that or is it now a non-issue? Thanks for all of your help. Best Regards, Frank On May 30, 12:46pm, Studded wrote: > Subject: Re: RTFM > Frank Pawlak wrote: > > > > Can anyone tell me where I can locate some accurate and current information > > describing why FreeBSD can carry heavier server loads than Linux? > > Linux' kernel was designed for 256 fd's. It can be extended beyond that > with some gymnastics however fundamentally the whole thing was not > designed for "heavy server loads." The BSD networking layer has no such > restrictions. > > We had a network consisting of almost all linux servers when I started > on dalnet almost 3 years ago. Ours was the first machine to try FreeBSD > and it wasn't very long before there weren't any linux boxes left. :) > Now there are a few new linux machines but they are all in .eu where > their client load is extremely small. > > Our experience with linux was that after a given period of time under > load (that period varying with factors we were never able to clearly > determine, but never more than 4 or 5 days) the networking layer would > just give up and the server would become non-responsive over the network > even though the machine was still up (active at the console). At the > time there were several people in the linux world who were confirming > that the failure was in the networking layer, including one of our > programmers who contributes to linux. > > The word is that the 2.1 version of the linux kernel fixes "all" of the > networking problems, however in our tests we have yet to get a linux 2.1 > machine to hold more than 400 clients reliably, which is approximately > where the 2.0 series failed as well. Of course, I have very little > confidence in the person running the linux test, but I don't actually > care that much either. :) > > Doug > > -- > *** Chief Operations Officer, DALnet IRC network *** > *** Proud designer and maintainer of one of the world's largest > *** Internet Relay Chat servers with 5,328 simultaneous connections > *** Try spider.dal.net on ports 6662-4 (Powered by FreeBSD) > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message >-- End of excerpt from Studded To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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