Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!think!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!BRUBECK.PROTEON.COM!jnc
From: jnc@BRUBECK.PROTEON.COM
Newsgroups: comp.sys.proteon
Subject: Re: memory, ip, decnet
Message-ID: <8712111557.AA09049@devvax.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: 11 Dec 87 15:50:07 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: jnc@proteon.com
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 16


	Scott, as far as I know, 80 buffers should be plenty (unless you
have 8 network interfaces or so :-). Remeber, buffers are only useful
to smooth out peaks in the traffic; lots of buffers are actually *worse*
than a few buffers. (There's at least one RFC that explains why; it's
by John Nagle. Basically, when you congest, more buffers means more old
packets heanging around. Lots of buffers do not help stuff 2 MB/sec down
a 1 MB/sec channel!) Look at the gateways now and see what the avergae
number of buffers in use is when they are running, and subtract that
number from 80; if the resulting number is much larger than 20 or so
you should be OK. Also, remember that because of the DECNet algorithms,
setting parameters substantially larger than they need to be uses memory.
I'm not too familiar with DECNet, but customer service has had a lot of
experience in this area and can fill you in on all the bits.
	Noel
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