From: jfc@athena.mit.edu (John F Carr) Subject: Re: Problem with tsx-11.mit.edu ? Date: 21 Apr 1993 12:49:48 GMT
tsx-11 is just a workstation; its goal in life is not to be an ftp server
(people do real work on it). So, connections are limited. The Linux ftp
archives may move from tsx-11 to a dedicated ftp server in the near future,
but nothing is certain (would someone like to donate a SCSI disk to MIT to
hold the Linux distribution?).
I suspect you'll have the same problem even if it does move, but less often.
There just isn't enough disk or network bandwidth to support all the people
who want SLS. The server needs to limit the number of connections, because
when the load gets too high the server can't move bits fast enough to keep
up with requests, and the load grows until the server crashes or runs out of
memory (when gcc 2.0 was released, the ftp server crashed once every hour or
two because it was not running a load-limiting ftpd).