Linux Terminal Server Essay

[Matthew Frederico]

What about the feasability of using the "un-used" terminals' processing
power?  I know ratios come in to play .. But you could create a dynamic
cluster?

On Fri, 2003-04-04 at 12:20, Steve Meyers wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-04-04 at 11:50, Mike wrote:
> > I am writing an argument paper about using a Linux Terminal Server to
> > run the college's network. I would appreciate it if you would send all
> > of the information on performance, reliablility, and expense to get
> > running that you could. Also, one thing was brought to my attention that
> > made me wonder: I was talked to about the whole theory behind it. It was
> > brought to my attention that you have at most a 1gigahertz cap. Bearing
> > that in mind, all the processing is done on the server and then sent
> > out. Now, the argument that I heard today was that it would be
> > intolerably slow, as the server has to do everything and send it out to
> > x number of clients over a limited bandwidth (1ghz).
> 
> Well, I can only give you theoretical help...
> 
> I assume you mean 1 gigabit, not 1 gigahertz.  The theoretical limit is
> 1 gigabit, if you have gigabit ethernet.  I believe that the practical
> limit is closer to 300-400 megabits -- PCs today can't handle much more
> than that.  That's what I seem to remember from BYU's CS 460, anyway.
> 
> The ideal setup would have each dynamically choose which server to
> connect to, based on load.  This is probably impractical though, so you
> would need to set up "clusters", with one server per cluster of
> terminals.  You couldn't have one server for the entire college, of
> course.
> 
> I think you'll be limited more by CPU power than by bandwidth, but I
> have no evidence to back that up.
> 
> Please share your paper with us when you're finished, I'm sure others
> could use your work to help with LTSP advocacy.
> 
> Steve
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-- 
Matthew Frederico <matt at ultrize.com>