265. Siva
January 7, 1999
quantumcavalier@hotmail.com
Reading the article brought one thing to my mind.. salespersons!!!! Obviously every salesperson is going to claim that their system or solution is the best..
Truly there is no ONE GREAT system.. If there is or was then you wouldn't need all the rest would you?
AS for the choice of OS and solution, the choice and answer lies with the user itself.
As I see it the choice needs to weigh the ISP's capabilities.
IF the ISP has a wealth of UNIX experienced personal, then obviously UNIX or LINUX would be a good choice.. OPEN SOURCE , plus the fact that APACHE , SENDMAIL, etc ( read all major and minor components of an ISP) are already available and tested on *NIX platforms. True there may be similar systems on NT platform, but from benchmarks, they seem to yet have reached stability( yes read stability- tell me when was the last time a *NIX sysadmin had to bring down a server because your word processor or calculator caused an error). Also licensing costs and support can probably kill you. Most programmers are brought up on some Unix system or the other in college. AS such it is easier to probably obtain knowledge workers and support than to look for a MCSE.
True I may seem biased towards *NIX systems, but then if u had to install Windows(95/NT) twice in a day for a whole week every other month, wouldn't you?

 264. Venkat Gudipati
January 7, 1999
vgudipati@hotmail.com
Linux is great.
So is Unix.
Windows Suck... BIG TIME.
Just work on Win 95 and then on Linux and Unix.
You will know what I mean.

 263. Gareth Barnard
January 7, 1999
black_i_mage@yahoo.com
It's no contest -- Linux beats NT in any category you care to name. It's more stable, it's faster, it's easier to configure, easier to use and it's cheaper. What about tech support? You ask. If you read the manuals, you don't need tech support. Bugs and security loopholes are fixed a day after they are discovered. With NT, you have to wait weeks for a patch. Greeting from deep in the heart of Texas!

 262. Greg Mildenhall
January 7, 1999
greg@networx.net.au
In the ISP industry, more than anywhere else, it is flexibility and the need to quickly meet new demands from your customers, and changes in technology itself, that determines the success of any enterprise. The constant change, high-pressure environments, and rapid adoption on the technological forefront is one of the reasons that the current mode of technology within ISPs is a weathervane for the future direction of technology in the enterprise. But what does this fast pace and desperate struggle to cope with endless change demand of a NOS? You need to be able to tell a client "of course we can do it" even while your pulse is still racing from the shock of what they have asked for. You need to know what your server is doing at 3am in the morning - and you need to know exactly. You need to any problems that arise to be clear-cut and well defined, and you need to have a server that is working for you, not following it's own merry whim. When the crunch comes, you need your systems to bend over backwards to fit the most urgent needs, and when they fall, you need the speed-of-deployment to slot something into support them before they even hit the ground. You need control.
In the past, control has meant one thing. Unix.
Unix's origins in computer science research means that it has been designed from the outset to be pushed, pulled and stretched to the nth degree - with all the facilities in place so that the user can see exactly how it ticks. The modularised, component-based nature has meant that anything that is possible, is possible on Unix, and is probably 90% in place. Unix won't always help you, but it will never stand in your way. You have control. This extreme control and flexibility in software has always been a boon, but traditionally, hardware has been very much the opposite scenario. Enter NT.
NT was perhaps the first serious attempt to apply the advantages of commodity hardware to the server room, in an attempt to gain the same benefits in hardware as I have described being provided by Unix software.
Now if you needed a new server and you needed it pronto, you could go and buy it from the computer shop on the corner. You may have to travel further to get the software you want, but it'll still be available within a working day, in general. NT lacked the power and flexibility of Unix software, and Unix's forays into the PC hardware arena were plagued by difficulties adjusting to the quantity, diversity, and often just plain shoddiness of the PC hardware market.
Unix held all the trumps in terms of reliability, scalability and efficiency, but NT had a (often misleading) similarity to familiar desktop systems, and of course the networking in those systems was built around NT.
So there were tradeoffs in favour of each, but Unix still held the upper hand, since the commodity-hardware issue was the only point in favour of NT that actually mattered in an ISP environment, and largely, Control was still king.
But the best of both worlds is possible.
It is called Linux.
Linux takes all of the flexibility, reliability, scalability, componentisation, standards-compliance, and what-have-you that Unix provided, and made it happen on the same hardware as NT (though less of it, since it had Unix's thriftiness with resources) with software you didn't even have to go down to the store to get a license for. Linux brought the two worlds together, and made itself an ever-more worthy competitor, playing by the rules that Unix and NT set.
But there is more to it than that. There is Open Source.
Open source suddenly meant that the people writing your software were just as flexible, just as fast-moving, just as pragmatic as you - largely because they were in exactly your position, often, indeed, working within the ISP industry. Suddenly, all of the rules were broken, and the restrictions fell away. Now, anything really was possible, and if the nearly-impossible was still horrifically difficult - well, all of that hard work and all those near-miracles are just the nature of the business. In a lot of ways, Linux, and other open source software, has pushed the ISP industry into a new era of expansion, competitiveness, and a general "can-do" atmosphere. The industry is more vibrant than ever before, and is sticking out like a beacon pointing the rest of technology-based industry towards the future.
I think, eventually, Linux will give so much choice that it becomes the only choice.
-Greg Mildenhall

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