The 166 Alphas are the faster of the boxes you are comparing.  You don't
say exactly what your DSL data speed is, however, I can give you some
concrete examples here:

An SS1+ under NetBSD, Linux, or Solaris will be able to saturate the
upstream bandwidth of a 400Mb/sec DSL connection with static content.
However, SSH type secure logins would be painfully slow to initiate with
the 25MHz CPU.  Thus frequent logins for remote administration makes
these undesireable, although these machines are fast enough to handle the
load when the connection is established.  It's just the key generation and
so forth that kills it.  It's adequate, but not preferred.  May be a good
caching DNS box.  Not sure how it would do in a firewall only mode.

The SS2 40MHz is more comperable to the 50MHz Sparc LX/Classic boxes that
I use.  These make great web servers for heavier static loads, mail
traffic, or light dynamic content loads.  SSH auth goes tolerably fast
with these, so remote admin is not as much of a chore if you're logging in
frequently.  Boxes of this class should come close to saturating your
10baseT network, let alone your slightly slower DSL link.

I don't have any experience on the generation of Alpha processor in the
166 Multias, but I do know it was an early design and no where near as
optimized as the latter ones.  However, it should be a respectable work
horse that should compare very well to a P-100 class PC.  If you will have
much dynamic content at all, then I would go with one of these.

You also mentioned using a mix.  I would highly encourage that!  I prefer
to have a mix of OS types, CPU types, and configurations so that a hacker
that is fortunate enough to get into one, can't worm his way through the
whole lot.

Good luck.

 On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, David Woyciesjes wrote:

> 	This message is posted to port-alpha and port-sparc, because of the
> nature of the question...
>
> Thanks in advance for your thoughts...
>
> Okay, here's the situation. I got a 10baseT network, with a DSL connection.
> I'm wondering what you all thought would be a better setup for my NetBSD
> servers (all with minimal custom kernels, of course!).
>
> Firewall:    Web/ftp:      DHCP/ftp for LAN
> 32 MB RAM    64(or32?)RAM  64(or32?)RAM
> 340 MB HDD   1.5 GB HDD    1 GB HDD
> ---All are Digital Equip. Multias 166 MHz
>
> ... or would this be fine, considering what the Sparcs are good for ...
>
> Firewall:     Web/ftp:    DHCP/ftp for LAN
> SS1+ 25 MHz   SS2 40 MHz  SS1+ 25 MHz
> 64 MB RAM     64 MB RAM   64 MB RAM
> 500 MB HDD    2 GB HDD    2 GB HDD
> ---All are Sun SPARCStations
>
> ...Or would a mix be best? HDD sizes can/will be changed as necessary...
>
> ---   David A Woyciesjes
> ---   C & IS Support Specialist
> ---   Yale University Press
> ---   mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu
> ---   (203) 432-0953
> ---   ICQ # - 905818
>