> Peak Local file access bandwidth is typically 50 to 100 MBPs > x number of disks; over the localnet it is about 80MBps. On > my internet connection I barely get 1MBps download (& 0.2MBps > upload) speeds.
interesting observation: when i first set up the diskless fileserver at coraid, we had a mirror of the worm in another building across an awful wireless connection. we had no more than 1mbit. at first i was a little worried about this, but then i realized that 128k/s * 86400s/day is 10.5gb/day. btw, with aoe, you should saturate the network—125 mb/s/interface for gbe so a typical el-cheepo computer these days can do 250mb/s over aoe without breaking a sweat. of course you'll get 10x that with 10gbe. i agree with charles, network attached, or even internet-attached storage seems like the way to go. for internet-attached storage, the amazing imbalances of very slow last-mile networks/very cheep mass storage and the power of slow networks over time lead me to think there are some very interesting engineering tradeoffs to be made. - erik
