You are absolutely correct.
Short answer, NFS is simpler to setup and manage (not much) and people are more familiar with it.
There are a few reasons I can see using NFS over rsync (I have an e-mail spool over nfs to a bunch of frontend email servers [using nfs aware maildir, really its ok;]), but most of them are pretty thin.
I don't have any current results, but a couple years ago I did some fairly extensive testing with perl-cgi, mod_perl and fastcgi. We tried to tweak everything on each example as much as we could (preloading modules, persistent DB connections, etc...). By FAR and away the best was fastcgi (which sort of suprised me btw). Also it has some nifty characteristics that may solve some of those "excess" DB connection problems (cgi pools, etc..). Also you can run your cgi's on a seperate server (or server pool) from the main web server(s) which is pretty cool. The downside (especially bad with poorly written perl) is that you have to be extra careful with persistent variables (although if your mod_perl already you ought to be pretty good there). Worth checking out anyway. http://www.fastcgi.com/
The article had some factual errors (what articles don't). First the current usable bandwidth is about 1.25Gbps (BITS not BYTES) per second. Oddly (or not;) this is happens to be the required bandwidth to run native Gigabit Ethernet over it (yielding 1Gbps bidirectional fully usable after modulation). It can also run at 622Mbps (OC12), but unless you have some specific operational requirement I'm not sure why you would. By end of year it ought to be working at OC48 (2.5Gbps), but thats not there yet. At somepoint in the not to distant future there is no reason that it couldn't be up to 12Gpbs (~OC192 or 10Ge), although that will likely impact distance a little.
The FCC is co primary with this band with the US Govmnt, and its unlikely that the govmnt will let them auction it off. An ideal situation would be a nominal license for specific link. The beams are so narrow that they are mostly non interfering (unlike 2.4Ghz, etc...), so this would make the most sense. Hard to say what will actually happen though.
The spectrum at this range has some interesting
properties:
Low atmospheric absorbtion Atmospheric absorption chart As you can see here this is right above the 60Ghz spike. This means that its better than laser, better than 60Ghz, and there is more spectrum available than the messy little swamp in the lower spectrum ranges.
Highly directional. This means that you can
get a LOT more gain for a comparable dish size.
Dust doesn't really affect it (in fact it
goes through most walls quite nicely as well, not
counting brick;).
There are also a few problems
Rain is an issue. Fortunately with the high
gain you can still get 2-5 miles (depending on the area) with up to 5 9's in most of the country (based on statistical analysis of rainfall). Most people don't need that high of reliability anyway,
so for reasonable line of site distances the point is moot.
They are hard to aim. Aiming a heavy 4 foot dish to hit a less than 200 foot target (.125 degree beam) 9 miles away is non trivial, but it is doable, and I've been at installations that handled up to 70Mph winds just fine.
Overall its pretty cool stuff. I wouldn't expect to see it replacing your DSL line at home any day soon, but for point to point business links, it rocks.
Re:.... and all free!
on
Hawaii Wi-Fi
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Its easy to be generous when you are getting free bandwidth from a university and state funds. I can't prove that this is the case from an external point of view, but I know that this is the case.
Re:Scalability issues
on
Hawaii Wi-Fi
·
· Score: 2, Informative
There is lots of bandwidth in HI. I have multiple megabits at work, other people in the building have at least 3Mb, some have more, the people down the street have access to an OC3 to the mainland, and we're on one of the "outer" islands (read not oahu). It does cost a wee bit more here than on the mainland, but not much.
Slashdot Mirror
Short answer, NFS is simpler to setup and manage (not much) and people are more familiar with it.
There are a few reasons I can see using NFS over rsync (I have an e-mail spool over nfs to a bunch of frontend email servers [using nfs aware maildir, really its ok ;]), but most of them are pretty thin.
I don't have any current results, but a couple years ago I did some fairly extensive testing with perl-cgi, mod_perl and fastcgi. We tried to tweak everything on each example as much as we could (preloading modules, persistent DB connections, etc...). By FAR and away the best was fastcgi (which sort of suprised me btw). Also it has some nifty characteristics that may solve some of those "excess" DB connection problems (cgi pools, etc..). Also you can run your cgi's on a seperate server (or server pool) from the main web server(s) which is pretty cool. The downside (especially bad with poorly written perl) is that you have to be extra careful with persistent variables (although if your mod_perl already you ought to be pretty good there). Worth checking out anyway.
http://www.fastcgi.com/
The FCC is co primary with this band with the US Govmnt, and its unlikely that the govmnt will let them auction it off. An ideal situation would be a nominal license for specific link. The beams are so narrow that they are mostly non interfering (unlike 2.4Ghz, etc...), so this would make the most sense. Hard to say what will actually happen though.
The spectrum at this range has some interesting properties:
There are also a few problems
Overall its pretty cool stuff. I wouldn't expect to see it replacing your DSL line at home any day soon, but for point to point business links, it rocks.
Its easy to be generous when you are getting free bandwidth from a university and state funds. I can't prove that this is the case from an external point of view, but I know that this is the case.
UH has boatloads of connectivity, check out thier traffic grpahs, hardly even used
http://thundarr.its.hawaii.edu/traffic/index.html