Mac Servers

[Kevin Justie]

Thanks to all who responded to my question several weeks ago concerning the
hit-rates supported by various Mac servers.  The general consensus was that
even a low-end PowerMac (i.e. 6100 series) can easily handle volumes in the
thousands of hits per day.  The important thing is having enough RAM - at
least 16Mb.  Several people said, and I've read elsewhere since, that
you'll run out of bandwidth before CPU power.  It was also suggested that
the site be divided between several servers, one serving pages, another
serving graphics, another running Hypercard for CGI purposes, etc.

Other suggestions:

-- Maxum Development Corp. (www.maxum.com) has a number of Mac Internet
server software products that look very useful, including ones to serve up
different pages based on requesting browser, restart servers after a crash,
and speed up graphics transfers.

-- Consider Frontier for CGI instead of Applescript.

-- Use Open Transport instead of MacTCP.

-- Use the commercial WebStar rather than the older MacHTTP.


... and sites:

http://juno.concordia.ca  -- PowerMac 6100, 2K hits/day
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/  -- 7100
http://siolibrary.ucsd.edu/siofish/  -- 6100
http://siksik.learnnet.nt.ca  --  7100
http://library.faytech.cc.nc.us/phtl.html  -- 7500
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu  -- 6150, 7100, IIsi
http://www.librarylrc.uams.edu/  -- 8100



Kevin Justie
Head of Technical and Automated Services
Morton Grove Public Library
Morton Grove, IL
(847) 965-4220
kjustie at mgk.nslsilus.org
http://www.nslsilus.org/mgkhome/
Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect
offical Library policy.