Re: Multisubnet NIS slave options

[jrg@blodwen.demon.co.uk (James R Grinter)]

On Mon 29 Jan, 2001, "Stephen P. Potter" <spp@spotter.yi.org> wrote:
>Lightning flashed, thunder crashed and "Shane B. Milburn" <milburn@panix.com> w
>hispered:
>| Here are the solutions we have come up with.
>| 
>| 1. Quad port cards in a couple of Ultra60's or even an
>|    x86 box. But as the number of subnets grows I'll
>|    need more machines/computer room space for the NIS slaves.

Stuart McRobert's paper at LISA IX leapt to mind, here:
"From Twisting Country Lanes to MultiLane Ethernet SuperHighways"
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/lisa95/mcrobert.html

They used quad-port ethernet cards in each box - and although the paper
mentions two per system, plus two standard ethernet interfaces, I know
they did have up to four in some eventually to cover 16 networks at a
time. You wouldn't be doing it for the same reasons, but it
demonstrates that it does work.

With 3 machines you could cover 32 networks *and* have two available
per network and in today's typically switched arrangements you might
not even have anywhere near that many subnets anyway.

>Ultra60s would be far over powered for this kind of service.  I'd suggest a
>couple of U5s, or even look at the new Sun Cobolt systems.  Their low end

The Cobalt stuff runs Linux - not to denegrate that, but not
necessarily suitable in a Sun shop, and I have no knowledge about
Linux's current ypserver capabilities (but to quote a Linux-using
colleague: "just say no.")

The Netra X1 - well, that's a bit lacking in the ethernet dept, if
you were going to try and cover a large amount of networks and keep
the box count down low.

James.