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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Core router bakeoff?
Karl Denninger writes: > > That is an excellent theory. The problem is, once I get PCs running > > BSD up, they typically remain up for hundreds of days, generally until > > I have to reboot them -- crashes are extremely rare. They give me no > > more hardware trouble than Ciscos. It might just be that I'm buying > > better PCs than some, but I'm perfectly happy with the results. > > The largest single source of failures in PCs is a failure in the power > supply fan. > > In most PCs, that will cook the remainder of the box in short order. > > The fix, of course, is to have more than one fan in the box (duh!), and to > buy power supplies that cost an extra $10 so they have higher-quality fans > in them. In general, I don't buy branded PCs. I tend to go to places where I get to spec the motherboard, drives, power supply, case, etc. There are a bunch of vendors that will let you work this way. Typically you end up having to form a relationship with a particular guy at your vendor who you know will get you what you want. Paul Vixie turned me on to Billy Bath (who now works at Tesys) but there are lots of others. I've done some work with a place in NYC operated by an immigrant family, where I literally walk in and point and the parts in the glass cases of their tiny and crowded shop. "I want THAT motherboard, THAT case, THAT powersupply... I'll need two machines, by tomorrow afternoon." Typically these places/guys are very cheap, but since I'm spec'ing every last bit of the thing I get pretty good control, since I end up knowing every detail of what I'm in for in advance. I don't believe in buying no-name stuff where I don't know what's in it, but its so easy to spec the whole thing these days that you *do* end up knowing what's in it. Perry
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