Re: [9fans] I've got 4 student intern (undergraduates) here.

[Borja Marcos <borjamar@sarenet.es>]

On Monday 11 June 2001 07:13, you wrote:
> When I tried to show it to our students, yes, I also felt it's not easy to
> do. However, as I know Plan 9 is very easy to maintain system and users,
> and to write programs, I started to do it by reading papers such as "Plan 9
> from Bell Labs" etc. with them.

	Plan 9 is a distributed system. It looks especially designed for 
heterogeneous networks, the kind of real-world applications you can find. 
When I read the first paper about the design of Plan 9 and its way to 
accomodate heterogeneous networks, with both high-speed local networks and 
slow-speed dialup accesses, it was quite obvious that a similar design (and 
it was the Inferno design goal) would be excellent for a service provider 
such as a cable modem network (or xDSL) who deploys "network computers" 
instead of simple set-top boxes.

	Other distributed OSs (Amoeba, for example) are designed with local area 
networks in mind, using the network as a bus for a processor pool if I 
oversimplify it. Plan 9, on the other hand, allows the developer and network 
architect distribute the applications taking into account the available 
bandwidth in each of the networks involved.

	In a real world network, the bandwidths can be as low as 33600 bps (a pstn 
modem) and as high as a gigabit. Apart from the elegant design, I think it 
can be the most interesting feature for many people.



	Borja.