On Wed, 5 Jul 1995, Mr. Rich Reybok wrote:

> Hi, I'm looking for some real-life examples that a 486 running NetBSD can 
> handle being the main nameserver for a domain. I need to convince my 
> boss that it is possible and I would like to present him with some 
> cold-hard facts. Any help would be appreciated.
> 

We currently use an ALR 486DX-33 with 16MB RAM and NetBSD 1.0 as a
dedicated nameserver that serves a large campus network, as well as most
of an extensive state-wide network for institutions of higher education. I
ran the stats on the server for a 24-hour period and found that it had
processed ~592,000 queries, which works out to about 6 queries per second.
We haven't had any problems with it. The only suggestion that I would make
is that you use an ethernet card with good throughput, as almost all of
your load will be network I/O. We've had pretty good luck with the SMC
8216 Ultra.  Also, if you're concerned about reliability, our server has
been up for 45-60 days at a time with no problems, and when I do take it
down it's generally just to shake out the cobwebs. 

Regards
____________________________________________________________________________ 
Mike Bradford                              internet: mbradfor@comp.uark.edu  
Network Services
Dept. of Computing Services	      University of Arkansas - Fayetteville