On 06/21/2009 06:39 PM, Sajeewa Warnakulasuriya wrote:

Alan,

Is there any advantage going with a 64bits system?

Others may have differing opinions or insights into issues I'm not aware of, but in the case of a radius server I don't believe a 64-bit system buys you all that much. The larger address space and expanded integer range is an advantage in some scenarios such as databases, clusters, etc. But the radius protocol and internal server operation doesn't really benefit from the wider integer and pointer addressing to the best of my knowledge. Nor would the backend database, the database tables for radius just aren't that large. One can't forget there is a performance penality for moving from 32-bits to 64-bits. Each situation is unique and it's dangerous to draw general conclusions but a rule of thumb around here is that compiled code (as opposed to interpreted code [1]) will consume an extra 1/3 of memory on average (that's run time locals and heap usage, plus extra for the larger code size). So you're paying a price to move larger amounts of data around and if you're not benefiting from the larger data then all you're doing is dropping your performance. [1] The reason for the distinction between compiled code and interpreted code is that many interpreters always allocate the maximum size data element whereas a compiler won't automatically use the maximum size data element, it's smarter. -- John Dennis <jdennis@redhat.com> Looking to carve out IT costs? www.redhat.com/carveoutcosts/