Suns new method of counting users is interesting in light of the fact
that their old slogan was "the network is the computer".
If one looks at the worst case (each user having an xterm on each
machine on the net, and each machine NFS mounting each other) then we
see that the number of "users" is:
1 user for each rlogin/xterm on each machine
1 user for each NFS mount exported to each machine
If we have N machines in a fully connected mesh, then we have the
following number of "users":
2 * N * N
Notice that the "users" as sun counts them goes up quadratically with
the real number of users sitting at keyboards. As anyone involved in
algorythms can tell you, quadratic growth in the time or cost to do
something is a *very* bad thing. Things become very expensive to
scale up.
(It certainly looks like Sun just intends to use the new creative user
counting to help hide the real cost of their system. They can still
quote low hardware prices, and then gloss over the fact that you
really need a zillion-user license to be in compliance with their
counting rules.)
-wolfgang
-- Wolfgang Rupprecht <wolfgang@wsrcc.com> 39469 Gallaudet Dr., Fremont CA 94538
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