I believe the post you were commenting on was referring to Fibre Channel as a mature technology as compared to serial ATA or serial SCSI. Fibre channel is by far and away faster than any other disk arrangements out there, and trumping out the silly FC-AL arguments is old. fibre channel switches do the same for your FC array as a true switch does for your network, compared to a hub. a fully switched mesh for your drives? at 2GB/sec ? I'll take it.
for that matter, the logic for a FC drive isn't that much worse than a SCSI drive, so you can just pick up the same drives as FC disks... we have piles of them for sun boxes, and they work very well.
FC-SCSI bridges are mostly used for lower-end storage devices, to cut down on cost. they have some value in the sense that you can have multiple scsi controllers accessing the drives in an enclosure(usually a proprietary setup, but useful) and then backending FC onto that. this allows for massive redundancy and we all know how much it sucks to have a controller blow at 4 am with no backup!
FC-SCSI bridges are also used for things like tape archives, cheap storage boxes, etc, when you're looking for a way to use that DLT library with your spiffy new SAN.
That's quite a bit, but it's not all that amazing anymore... considering the massive decrease in cost of SONET/SDH gear, and the move towards directly provisioning DWDM for IP (whether you agree with it or not!) as well as the huge excess of fibre laying around.
considering that an OC-48c handles about 2.5gbit/sec, and way back in 1999 when I was working at our colo I saw numerous firms that had their own OC48 or higher, I can imagine that now in the heady post-bomb days there's huge quantities of cheaper bandwidth around.
I'm sure, however, that your uncapped cable modem still wows you:)
... you could put out a hit on the contractor, and (maybe) his wife. It's important to make sure the subcontractor you hire to do the job has a good reputation for quality work, and won't do things with shoddy tools. You don't want the $5000 sub to just use an ice pick that could leave the hit still alive, when the $15000 sub could use a proper high-caliber weapon to turn his face to mush.
Some are inclined to do their own contracting, but I've found that the federal inspectors tend to be grumpy in these kinds of situations. I'd suggest that folks leave the work to those with the right skills and cope with the additional cost.
Pretty much all standard business desktops have intrusion detection devices, as well as bios hooks to inform higher level software apps that it has been tripped. Most server cases have this as well- a whole slew of my compaq racks here have them, and they tie into our management system. Mind you, they lock as well, so I'm not as worried- they have solenoids! *THUNK*
I can't imagine someone cobbling together something that has existed forever is news...
VOCAL can implement H.323, SIP, and MGCP gateways, or a combination of the three. SIP is a new standard that helps to eliminate much of the complexity of H.323, and I think (from having used both H.323 and SIP products) that SIP just slays H.323. while it's still a newer technology, it has much better scalability as well as the ability to be a ubiquitous IP/phone/video service. addressing is simple, it's as easy as sipuser@host.they.are.at. your client (at least in the VOCAL infrastructure) updates a registration server as to your current location, and proxy servers will always move calls in the right direction towards you. Sound like a perfect fit for new Mobile IP networks, anyone? this is a killer app that's just waiting to be implemented...
let me start by saying that SIP is very, very good. all of Cisco's IP telephony products are based on SIP now, instead of their previous mucky protocols. many larger vendors are also supporting SIP, as it an RFC and other goodness. VOCAL, which I have had the pleasure of working with recently, is very well designed, and (in my biased opinion) is nice because it's not really "linux centric". we did a test deployment on several FreeBSD systems functioning as a Vmail system, inter-office IP phone calls (to both Cisco SoftPhone clients and actual cisco IP phones) and working with a cisco 3640 router with two VIC-2FXO cards (which provides 4 lines out to the PSTN through our PBX). the mapping is pretty easy from cisco VOCAL, and the VOCAL user agent piece is pretty cool, although right now it's just a very basic CLI tool under windows. We really haven't tried using a unix system as there are few end users at a brokerage firm who actively use unix as a client desktop!
definitely check out the cisco SIP offerings, as well as the excellent vovida project and tools. they have a lot more to offer as well, including some frivolous PSTN gateway stuff using those internet linejack bits. I personally agree with what they've been doing, which is building an enterprise-class IP telephony infrastructure, rather than wasting time on stuff for college kids to avoid phone bills. but then again your needs may differ from ours. YMMV!
Oddly enough, I started using Mac OS X *BECAUSE* it has a command line. as a long time BSD user, I've always wanted a useful and responsive interface- os X gives me that, with my beloved bsd core beneath. it's a joy to use for that reason; I know several other BSD geeks who have bought new apples for this reason only, and never would have even thought about it prior to X.
Now if they would only port Aqua to x86, so it could run on all my happy darwin/x86 boxes...
Since 802.1q is the spec for tagged VLANs on ethernet switches, I somehow doubt that's going to apply to phones:)
for that matter, most cable networks have pretty decent bandwidth. since Qwest is starting to roll out DSLAMs that are fed with T1(s), your DSL connection and your 70 neighbors DSL connections going into a DSLAM with 4 T1's isn't going very far. I'll take my 4Mbit cable modem any day over DSL.
I've felt that way in the past too, although lately I've come to the decision that any form of armed rebellion would be pretty much fruitless. Hence it's time to go underground.
actually, as another respondent to you points out, not a lot of them use email. this is not usually because of "not knowing how", though- it's because email is subpoenable. remember Iran-Contra and Ollie North's emails? President Bush (Shrub Jr) has told all his correspondents, family and friends that he no longer will be using email solely because it could be subpoenaed later down the road (and it also becomes a matter of public record.)
Any politician faced with having his/her "personal" correspondence becoming public record will stop using it immediately. anything can be taken out of context!
Imagine if Dick cheney had discussed his plans for Enron's energy plan for the US via email. what would happened? we might have know the truth about what was going on, for goodness sakes!
silly comments aside, this is a very real fear among politicians and their hangers-on. having your own words put the sword in your back is painful, and having your waffling pointed out in hard copy is never fun.
I hate to say it, but I think we're going to see much more of this kind of mentality coming from our elected officials (and candidates). You have to realize they farm this sort of thing out, and to them it's all a broad spectrum of marketing/contact/fundraising/etc.
I doubt the candidate in mind was even aware of what was going on, but when confronted he responded as you would expect any politico to respond. doublespeak and warm fuzzies, with a handful of buzzwords.
Hopefully there will be a day when there is a representative we can stand behind- the only way we can get there is for all of us to make our voices heard, and to use the system to fight the system. as many have said before, make phone calls or write actual letters spelling out WHY you feel something is bad, and rational reasons as to why they as your elected representative should be against something.
pretty much all of the Intel server cards as well as several of the desktop cards support channel bonding. all compaq server NICs support this as well, and it works great.
however, I would take issue with your assertion that 3 100mbit cards are roughly equal to a gigabit card. while it's true that something like 4 100mbit cards will give you close to the real performance of a gigabit card when used on a low end PC, there is much to be gained by using actual gigabit (use of giant frames, better latencies, etc.)
if you're going to build a cluster, and you actually have a budget, you're going to buy decent yet cheap server boxes. these will most likely include 64bit PCI slots, and there lies your motivation for gigabit. the performance there is unparalleled when using a real wirespeed switch, without using faster technologies of a proprietary nature.
You hit it dead on there. while you or I have no problem popping in and futzing with the configs by hand or killing processes, those pesky coworkers tend to be completely ignorant of such things.
nothing sells a free UN*X system to your management like this:
you: "we'd need to stretch our WinNT admins further and have them understand how this app works on this system; additionally we'll need 500 more server licenses for NT."
boss: "but that would cost more!"
you: "well, we do have this test environment set up, but it's running under FreeBSD (insert your OS of choice here)."
boss: "But isn't that hard to understand? what if you get hit by a bus?"
you: "well, before you say that, check out this nifty web interface to controlling the system. very nice and straightforward. very easy to use. the NT admins are ALREADY USING IT for other systems, too."
boss: "wow, that's pretty slick. and this is free?"
you: "yes, it's free, and we are ALREADY USING IT in the environment with no problems whatsoever. it also allows for authorized admins to remotely control the systems for 24/7 coverage! and what's more, FreeBSD (insert your OS here) is free, and we have to spend money only on server hardware."
boss: "well, looks like that's the best solution then. write up a proposal and go for it."
not that it always works like that, but sometimes it does, and that's a beautiful thing. plus, scripting your own needed code and adding it on as a webmin module is pretty easy, and can handle most anything you might need to do by hand, or via a script you're running from an ssh term. why bother? just *click*.
I personally found greenspun to be a rather egotistical elitist. I can't say that I feel too badly for him either, as he made off a whole lot better than the employees who lost their jobs.
Not everyone finds the whole Cambridge/MIT nexus to be appealing, much less a reason for existing as some folks do...
I should point out that 'gigabit' SCSI would be 125Mbyte/sec, well below the current speed holders (the Ultra3 standard at 160MByte/sec, and the upcoming Ultra320 at 320MByte/sec.)
For what it's worth in the real datahauling business, firewire is a laugh:)
Just recently several money transfer services in my hometown of Minneapolis were shut down. these were services used by our large Somali population to wire money back home to family members- they are a form of money tranfer based on trust called "hawalla". rather than paperwork etc it all is based on money transfers happening because people can be held to their word.
these organisations (that were shut down) were purportedly having money skimmed off the top of each transfer by members of the Al-Qu'eda network. whether or not this was happening, and whether or not the proprietors were aware of it, it has had a large negative impact on the US Somali community.
The Somali companies shut down that this article references were conduits for these money transfers, and I personally expect to see dire consequences come from this. as it states, 80% of the money coming in to somalia is from foreign workers sending money home. Do the math on that, and you come up with a large number of hardworking US residents having no way to support starving family members back home! this isn't a good thing.
I fully support shutting down organizations and companies that are funding terrorist activities- but how hard would it be for Bush to help out these hawallas and open up alternate methods of transfer? I'm sure that some of them would be willing to some oversight into their financial transactions as well, vs. being put out of business permanently.
I'd like to see a little more of that "compassionate conservatism" and a little less of Bush's ethnocentric reactionism. let's pray that he comes to his senses and stops harming innocent civilians in this crisis.
that's true- nobody can deny theo's got some massive skills.
I don't understand why this fink guy would use something as silly as debian apt-get or whatever instead of using the FREEBSD ports mechanism- which (in my opinion) is vastly superior, and would probably represent less work on his part. when someone creates the Fbsd ports tree for OS X I'll finally buy a system with it.
why go and muddy up the BSD license world with lots of icky GPL code? ewwww!
Slashdot Mirror
Remember the Quantum Bigfoot?
with more delicate electronics and finer distances, consumers seem to just thrash things that have any kind of inertia or movement. bleh.
oh well.
Thank you for trotting out the cluestick.
I believe the post you were commenting on was referring to Fibre Channel as a mature technology as compared to serial ATA or serial SCSI. Fibre channel is by far and away faster than any other disk arrangements out there, and trumping out the silly FC-AL arguments is old. fibre channel switches do the same for your FC array as a true switch does for your network, compared to a hub. a fully switched mesh for your drives? at 2GB/sec ? I'll take it.
for that matter, the logic for a FC drive isn't that much worse than a SCSI drive, so you can just pick up the same drives as FC disks... we have piles of them for sun boxes, and they work very well.
FC-SCSI bridges are mostly used for lower-end storage devices, to cut down on cost. they have some value in the sense that you can have multiple scsi controllers accessing the drives in an enclosure(usually a proprietary setup, but useful) and then backending FC onto that. this allows for massive redundancy and we all know how much it sucks to have a controller blow at 4 am with no backup!
FC-SCSI bridges are also used for things like tape archives, cheap storage boxes, etc, when you're looking for a way to use that DLT library with your spiffy new SAN.
Don't mock what you don't understand, please.
I concur about the whole ID thing. I thought it was retarded, but once I figured that I could block out some of the lame crap it was worth it (maybe.)
the whole karma whore thing is really dumb, and leads to silly pap and dumb commentary. blah.
That's quite a bit, but it's not all that amazing anymore... considering the massive decrease in cost of SONET/SDH gear, and the move towards directly provisioning DWDM for IP (whether you agree with it or not!) as well as the huge excess of fibre laying around.
:)
considering that an OC-48c handles about 2.5gbit/sec, and way back in 1999 when I was working at our colo I saw numerous firms that had their own OC48 or higher, I can imagine that now in the heady post-bomb days there's huge quantities of cheaper bandwidth around.
I'm sure, however, that your uncapped cable modem still wows you
... you could put out a hit on the contractor, and (maybe) his wife. It's important to make sure the subcontractor you hire to do the job has a good reputation for quality work, and won't do things with shoddy tools. You don't want the $5000 sub to just use an ice pick that could leave the hit still alive, when the $15000 sub could use a proper high-caliber weapon to turn his face to mush.
Some are inclined to do their own contracting, but I've found that the federal inspectors tend to be grumpy in these kinds of situations. I'd suggest that folks leave the work to those with the right skills and cope with the additional cost.
Pretty much all standard business desktops have intrusion detection devices, as well as bios hooks to inform higher level software apps that it has been tripped. Most server cases have this as well- a whole slew of my compaq racks here have them, and they tie into our management system. Mind you, they lock as well, so I'm not as worried- they have solenoids! *THUNK*
I can't imagine someone cobbling together something that has existed forever is news...
M-business. there's a magazine called that. blah.
ugh. I second that. sheesh.
VOCAL can implement H.323, SIP, and MGCP gateways, or a combination of the three. SIP is a new standard that helps to eliminate much of the complexity of H.323, and I think (from having used both H.323 and SIP products) that SIP just slays H.323. while it's still a newer technology, it has much better scalability as well as the ability to be a ubiquitous IP/phone/video service. addressing is simple, it's as easy as sipuser@host.they.are.at. your client (at least in the VOCAL infrastructure) updates a registration server as to your current location, and proxy servers will always move calls in the right direction towards you. Sound like a perfect fit for new Mobile IP networks, anyone? this is a killer app that's just waiting to be implemented...
let me start by saying that SIP is very, very good. all of Cisco's IP telephony products are based on SIP now, instead of their previous mucky protocols. many larger vendors are also supporting SIP, as it an RFC and other goodness. VOCAL, which I have had the pleasure of working with recently, is very well designed, and (in my biased opinion) is nice because it's not really "linux centric". we did a test deployment on several FreeBSD systems functioning as a Vmail system, inter-office IP phone calls (to both Cisco SoftPhone clients and actual cisco IP phones) and working with a cisco 3640 router with two VIC-2FXO cards (which provides 4 lines out to the PSTN through our PBX). the mapping is pretty easy from cisco VOCAL, and the VOCAL user agent piece is pretty cool, although right now it's just a very basic CLI tool under windows. We really haven't tried using a unix system as there are few end users at a brokerage firm who actively use unix as a client desktop!
definitely check out the cisco SIP offerings, as well as the excellent vovida project and tools. they have a lot more to offer as well, including some frivolous PSTN gateway stuff using those internet linejack bits. I personally agree with what they've been doing, which is building an enterprise-class IP telephony infrastructure, rather than wasting time on stuff for college kids to avoid phone bills. but then again your needs may differ from ours. YMMV!
Oddly enough, I started using Mac OS X *BECAUSE* it has a command line. as a long time BSD user, I've always wanted a useful and responsive interface- os X gives me that, with my beloved bsd core beneath. it's a joy to use for that reason; I know several other BSD geeks who have bought new apples for this reason only, and never would have even thought about it prior to X.
Now if they would only port Aqua to x86, so it could run on all my happy darwin/x86 boxes...
Since 802.1q is the spec for tagged VLANs on ethernet switches, I somehow doubt that's going to apply to phones :)
for that matter, most cable networks have pretty decent bandwidth. since Qwest is starting to roll out DSLAMs that are fed with T1(s), your DSL connection and your 70 neighbors DSL connections going into a DSLAM with 4 T1's isn't going very far. I'll take my 4Mbit cable modem any day over DSL.
Wow, I remember those power strips. they were hilarious, you'd read the box and wonder who in hell thought that made sense to put on it.
I've felt that way in the past too, although lately I've come to the decision that any form of armed rebellion would be pretty much fruitless. Hence it's time to go underground.
actually, as another respondent to you points out, not a lot of them use email. this is not usually because of "not knowing how", though- it's because email is subpoenable. remember Iran-Contra and Ollie North's emails? President Bush (Shrub Jr) has told all his correspondents, family and friends that he no longer will be using email solely because it could be subpoenaed later down the road (and it also becomes a matter of public record.)
Any politician faced with having his/her "personal" correspondence becoming public record will stop using it immediately. anything can be taken out of context!
Imagine if Dick cheney had discussed his plans for Enron's energy plan for the US via email. what would happened? we might have know the truth about what was going on, for goodness sakes!
silly comments aside, this is a very real fear among politicians and their hangers-on. having your own words put the sword in your back is painful, and having your waffling pointed out in hard copy is never fun.
I hate to say it, but I think we're going to see much more of this kind of mentality coming from our elected officials (and candidates). You have to realize they farm this sort of thing out, and to them it's all a broad spectrum of marketing/contact/fundraising/etc.
I doubt the candidate in mind was even aware of what was going on, but when confronted he responded as you would expect any politico to respond. doublespeak and warm fuzzies, with a handful of buzzwords.
Hopefully there will be a day when there is a representative we can stand behind- the only way we can get there is for all of us to make our voices heard, and to use the system to fight the system. as many have said before, make phone calls or write actual letters spelling out WHY you feel something is bad, and rational reasons as to why they as your elected representative should be against something.
my 2 cents. have a good weekend!
pretty much all of the Intel server cards as well as several of the desktop cards support channel bonding. all compaq server NICs support this as well, and it works great.
however, I would take issue with your assertion that 3 100mbit cards are roughly equal to a gigabit card. while it's true that something like 4 100mbit cards will give you close to the real performance of a gigabit card when used on a low end PC, there is much to be gained by using actual gigabit (use of giant frames, better latencies, etc.)
if you're going to build a cluster, and you actually have a budget, you're going to buy decent yet cheap server boxes. these will most likely include 64bit PCI slots, and there lies your motivation for gigabit. the performance there is unparalleled when using a real wirespeed switch, without using faster technologies of a proprietary nature.
my 2 cents.
You hit it dead on there. while you or I have no problem popping in and futzing with the configs by hand or killing processes, those pesky coworkers tend to be completely ignorant of such things.
nothing sells a free UN*X system to your management like this:
you: "we'd need to stretch our WinNT admins further and have them understand how this app works on this system; additionally we'll need 500 more server licenses for NT."
boss: "but that would cost more!"
you: "well, we do have this test environment set up, but it's running under FreeBSD (insert your OS of choice here)."
boss: "But isn't that hard to understand? what if you get hit by a bus?"
you: "well, before you say that, check out this nifty web interface to controlling the system. very nice and straightforward. very easy to use. the NT admins are ALREADY USING IT for other systems, too."
boss: "wow, that's pretty slick. and this is free?"
you: "yes, it's free, and we are ALREADY USING IT in the environment with no problems whatsoever. it also allows for authorized admins to remotely control the systems for 24/7 coverage! and what's more, FreeBSD (insert your OS here) is free, and we have to spend money only on server hardware."
boss: "well, looks like that's the best solution then. write up a proposal and go for it."
not that it always works like that, but sometimes it does, and that's a beautiful thing. plus, scripting your own needed code and adding it on as a webmin module is pretty easy, and can handle most anything you might need to do by hand, or via a script you're running from an ssh term. why bother? just *click*.
Redheads are god's gift to the men of the world. I should know, I married one :)
Congratulations you two and I wish you all the best!
I personally found greenspun to be a rather egotistical elitist. I can't say that I feel too badly for him either, as he made off a whole lot better than the employees who lost their jobs.
Not everyone finds the whole Cambridge/MIT nexus to be appealing, much less a reason for existing as some folks do...
It's pretty easy to do incremental kernel updates- all it takes is:
/usr/src
:)
cd
make buildkernel kernconf=KERNCONF.FILENAME
then when it's done, just do:
make installkernel
see, wasn't that easy? oh wait... wrong OS
I should point out that 'gigabit' SCSI would be 125Mbyte/sec, well below the current speed holders (the Ultra3 standard at 160MByte/sec, and the upcoming Ultra320 at 320MByte/sec.)
:)
For what it's worth in the real datahauling business, firewire is a laugh
Just recently several money transfer services in my hometown of Minneapolis were shut down. these were services used by our large Somali population to wire money back home to family members- they are a form of money tranfer based on trust called "hawalla". rather than paperwork etc it all is based on money transfers happening because people can be held to their word.
these organisations (that were shut down) were purportedly having money skimmed off the top of each transfer by members of the Al-Qu'eda network. whether or not this was happening, and whether or not the proprietors were aware of it, it has had a large negative impact on the US Somali community.
The Somali companies shut down that this article references were conduits for these money transfers, and I personally expect to see dire consequences come from this. as it states, 80% of the money coming in to somalia is from foreign workers sending money home. Do the math on that, and you come up with a large number of hardworking US residents having no way to support starving family members back home! this isn't a good thing.
I fully support shutting down organizations and companies that are funding terrorist activities- but how hard would it be for Bush to help out these hawallas and open up alternate methods of transfer? I'm sure that some of them would be willing to some oversight into their financial transactions as well, vs. being put out of business permanently.
I'd like to see a little more of that "compassionate conservatism" and a little less of Bush's ethnocentric reactionism. let's pray that he comes to his senses and stops harming innocent civilians in this crisis.
that's true- nobody can deny theo's got some massive skills.
I don't understand why this fink guy would use something as silly as debian apt-get or whatever instead of using the FREEBSD ports mechanism- which (in my opinion) is vastly superior, and would probably represent less work on his part. when someone creates the Fbsd ports tree for OS X I'll finally buy a system with it.
why go and muddy up the BSD license world with lots of icky GPL code? ewwww!