[WEB4LIB] At what point does PWS cease to be sufficient

[Andro Gagne]

John:

         At 01:19 AM 5/7/02 -0700, you wrote:

>I am creating a small intranet, about 4 pcs connected to a web server. I
>plan to use Personal Web Server running on a Windows NT workstation. The
>server will be serving Tiff images; each image is approximately 1.5 mb. The
>4 clients will use the Alternatiff plug-in to view the images in browsers.
>
>My question is can PWS handle an intranet this size? At what point would PWS
>cease to be a feasible option? The alternative is to use Apache running on
>Linux but I would find PWS easier to administer.

         Based on my experience using PWS for a library intranet site in a 
corporate setting for about 1 2/3 years, PWS may handle your situation 
fairly well most of the time, especially if all four PCs aren't being used 
at the same time.  As you know, this is not the most robust of platforms, 
but I found it usually was able to handle three simultaneous users on a 
good day, maybe occasionally four simultaneous users.  The fourth or fifth 
simultaneous user got an error message page indicating there were too many 
users.  If you're interested in working up to a Win NT/IIS server 
eventually, the migration is fairly easy to do.  If this mini-server might 
eventually become a publicly accessible server on the WWW, however, I would 
recommend going with Linux/Apache, as, in the long run, I think the latter 
is likely to be less work for you in regard to keeping it resistant to 
attack by folks on the Internet who are not burdened by a 
conscience.  However, your mileage may vary.

Best regards,

Andro P. Gagne
Andro Gagne Web Design