[222] in resnet
Re: remote access to public workstations at night
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (fihsu@MIT.EDU)
Thu Mar 3 10:01:33 1994
From: fihsu@MIT.EDU
To: Gilbert Leung <gleung@MIT.EDU>
Cc: resnet@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 03 Mar 94 00:33:35 -0500.
Date: Thu, 03 Mar 94 10:00:43 EST
gleung@mit.edu writes:
> I have it thought a little. You could have have a general cname
>that resolves to a free public machine just like the dialup name service
>when there are N% or more public machines free; or one that refuses to
>connect when the public clusters are too crowded. Then, that particular
A few concerns off the bat:
1) Dialup machines require extra attention with regards to security. To
allow this dynamic conversion of public machines to become servers would
essentially mean having to take the effort that goes into keeping the
dialup machines secure and extend this to every machine on campus.
2) Machines serving n users instead of 1 would probably need more memory
(I'm not sure how the hardware of dialup machines compares with public
ones.) Once again, if you allow any public machine to potentially become
a server you'd need to increase the memory on every machine. (Then again,
I guess if alot of machines become available the number of users on each
would go down.)
>and hosing them in general. Athena usage is generally very high during the
>day, but from 1am to about 9am, usually there are many free public
>workstations as a whole n(i.e. the TOTAL in cview). Wouldn't it be nice if
>2) it provides great convenience for resnet people who work late at night.
On the other hand, as you point out.. the shift of usage from clusters to
dialup during the nighttime hours is an important observation. What is the
percentage usage of cluster machines during the late night hours and how
much might it increase when the weather gets better??
Francis
