mlandau@Diamond.BBN.COM (Matt Landau) (11/17/86)
I need some information on how to measure and compute meaningful metrics
about ethernet performance and traffic levels, in particular about "the
amount of traffic generated" by adding diskless Sun 3's to a local ethernet.
Let's say I have a hypothetical network in place, and I want to put, say,
30 diskless Suns (a mix of 3/50's, 3/75's, and 3/110's) and a couple of
servers (3/160's and 3/260's) on it -- is there any way to estimate how much
traffic I'd be generating, assuming a "standard" mix of edits, compiles, a
few Lisps here and there? What if I wanted to put 100 diskless Suns and
maybe 10 or 15 servers on one ethernet? 500 diskless and 50 servers?
In other words, I'd like to be able to figure out just how far can one
push a single ethernet before it gets swamped? Any useful ideas, either for
measuring the numbers or from experience with large numbers of diskless
machines? (Sun, are you listening, and can you tell me how this is handled
at SMI?)
Please reply by mail, and I'll summarize if there's any interest.
--
Matt Landau BBN Laboratories, Inc.
mlandau@diamond.bbn.com 10 Moulton Street, Cambridge MA 02238
...seismo!diamond.bbn.com!mlandau (617) 497-2429shannon@sun.uucp (Bill Shannon) (11/18/86)
> I need some information on how to measure and compute meaningful metrics > about ethernet performance and traffic levels, in particular about "the > amount of traffic generated" by adding diskless Sun 3's to a local ethernet. What you want to know is the "netstone" rating of each machine! (Credit to Bill Joy for coining the term "netstone".) Bill Shannon
kumar@gec-mi-at.co.uk (S. Kumara-Moorthy) (11/20/86)
>> From: mlandau@Diamond.BBN.COM (Matt Landau) >> Organization: BBN Laboratories, Inc., Cambridge, MA >> >> I need some information on how to measure and compute meaningful metrics >> about ethernet performance and traffic levels, in particular about "the >> amount of traffic generated" by adding diskless Sun 3's to a local ethernet. > From: shannon@sun.uucp (Bill Shannon) > Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. > > What you want to know is the "netstone" rating of each machine! > (Credit to Bill Joy for coining the term "netstone".) Could someone ( is this a "job" for the man-from-sun ?) inform me, a) what "netstone" ratings are, b) how I interpret them when known, and c) what the ratings are for various diskless Sun 3's ( 3/50's, 375's, 3/110's, 3/140's not forgetting the big boys 3/160's and 3/260's ) ? Seriously, I am currently considering putting a number of Sun's ( a 3/160 serving 2 or 3 3/50's ) on an existing ethernet. Comments from anyone who has had experience with large number of diskless machines, will be very welcome.. Please reply by e-mail, as I don't necessarily regularly monitor the net news. Kumar... ***************************************************************************** ** S.Kumara-Moorthy ** UUCP : ...mcvax!ukc!hrc63!miduet!kumar ** ** ** NRS : kumar@uk.co.gec-mi-at ** ** Marconi Instruments Ltd ** ** ** St. Albans ** ** ** Herts. AL4 0JN. ** ** ** England. ** Phone: +44 727 59292 x611 ** ***************************************************************************** ** "The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect" ** ** "those of my employer, and may not even reflect my own" ** *****************************************************************************
shannon@sun.uucp (Bill Shannon) (11/27/86)
netstones (or nhetstones) are only a concept at this point. There is a great opportunity for someone to write a network performance benchmark suite to give us all more meaningless numbers to compare, just like whetstones and dhrystones.