Very Computer

Quote:>service up to a maximum of 200 dial-in phone lines.
[stuff deleted]
>    Once the user's software has connected, our end of the system must
>query a database for information, create some kind of outgoing packet and
>transfer the information with a standard protocol.  Needless to say, most
>of the time spend during the connection between a caller and our system
>will be  high-speed transfers.  NOTE: Throughput is critical, since
>callers will be dialing a 1-800 # to reach our service.
[stuff dleted]
>    What suggestions do you have for purchasing a UNIX based file
>server? A back-end database management system? What software development
>tools will be needed?  I realize that if we contract out, most of the
>software development issues will probably be taken care of, but we still
>may be required to purchase some of the more specialized tools, like
>communication libraries, etc.

An NFS network of Linux 486 PC's each handling X out of the 200 users. I'm
guessing X is anywhere from a dozen to two dozen. Remember that each PC is
well under $2000, and Linux is free, so having a number of PC's is still
quite cheap. I'm assuming that your going to be compiling from C code,
rather than buying precompiled packages, since there isn't much precompiled
software available for Linux yet. Like most Unix systems Linux comes with
a c and c++ compiler and de*.

If your database is small enough you could stick a copy on each machine
(gig drives are well under $1000 these days).
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