I am (currently) the sysadmin for the Toronto Free-Net, an on-line system
that expects to serve a user base of 200000+ users (500 on-line at once)
within two years.  At the moment, we are running SunOS 4.1.3.  However,
this will not support more than 60000 users.  Neither will Solaris 2,
unless the kernel is patched to remove checks for >60000 users.  Solaris 2
security also resembles a block of Swiss cheese, and I am not satisfied
with Sun's track record vis. patches.

For this reason, I am seriously considering cutting over to NetBSD.  The
last time I looked, sun4c was supported.  I have heard rumors that sun4m
is also supported.  A few questions:

- How stable are the sun4c/sun4m ports?  Will they run on the newer hardware
  such as the Sparc5?

- (Putting asbestos suit on) How difficult would it be to support the
  dual-processor SparcServer 670/MP?  This happens to be our flagship
  machine, responsible for running the bulk of our user's applications.
  I understand that MP is very difficult to get right and that extensive
  kernel hacking may be required.

-- 
David Jones, M.A.Sc student, Electronics Group (VLSI), University of Toronto
           email: dej@eecg.toronto.edu, finger for PGP public key
        finger dej@torfree.net for latest Toronto Free-Net information
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