Message-Id: <199512070151.UAA16752@the-other-woman.MIT.EDU>
To: Frederick A Niles <niles@MIT.EDU>
Cc: pc-dialup@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 06 Dec 1995 20:31:09 EST."
             <199512070131.UAA04538@ringworld.MIT.EDU> 
Date: Wed, 06 Dec 1995 20:51:31 EST
From: Jonathon Weiss <jweiss@MIT.EDU>


>> I love the ringworld machine! Please keep it up!

We're glad to hear it.

>> In fact, for software development it would be nice to have one
>> of each platform available for dialup...Is this possiable?
>> That is, (at least) one Sun, DEC, IBM, SGI, BSD, and Linux dialup.

Unfortunately, it is very unlikely that this will happen.  The problem
is that it requires a lot of work to come up with a software
configuration that is acceptable for a multi-user machine like a
dialup.  It also requires a lot of work to maintain the dialup
servers.  Currently, we are taking advantage of the fact that all of
the production dialup servers are DECstations and thus can be made
nearly identical.  Having a dialup for each type of platform would not
be as effective use of our limited resources.  It is also the case
that we discourage load intensive processes (such as compiling) on the
dialups, because they are a resource that is shared by so many people.
Ringworld is part of an experiment to see whether NetBSD machines
could someday replace the DECstations as dialup servers.

	Jonathon Weiss
	jweiss@mit.edu
	Athena Systems Support