Notwork: Machines

Notwork has a number of workstations and servers, all hanging off of a T1 (let's hear it for bandwidth!). Some of our machines just run Win95 (blah!) and serve as personal workstations. The graphics for this website were produced on some of those machines. On the other hand, we have a few machines running UNIX, and these are the ones we love. If you're not familiar with UNIX, you might want to pay a visit to UNIX Guru Universe.

If you are familiar with UNIX... well, then you know the power and versatility, not to mention the endless hours of fun, provided by this operating system. Which flavors of UNIX are we using at Notwork? The answer to that question is constantly changing, but in the past we've run FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, NEXTSTEP, Solaris, Linux, and others. Lots of our UNIX hardware is 80x86-based (hey, it's cheap), but we also have UNIX boxes based on the 680x0 and other processors. We have a strong preference for free UNIX (that's the way it's meant to be). In fact, we prefer to use free software in general. You can't beat production-quality software with freely-available source code!

On the left is our T-1. It is a digital leased line, providing 1.54Mbps (megabits/second) to the Internet. Our T-1 goes to TeKnowledge (TKI), which is run by our friend (and Notwork member) Manos. He, in turn, has connectivity to MCI, which is pretty reliable. TKI also hosts the 2600 Magazine website, which you might like to pay a visit to. On our end of the T1 is an Ascend Pipeline 130 called nastassja. (We only use it cause it's all we have.) On TKI's end is a Cisco 2501... that's more like it! We really shouldn't complain though, since our bandwidth is pretty sweet. Notwork's LAN is a 10Base-T ethernet (10Mbps). 10Base-T is a star-topology network, so we have Category 5 (CAT5) cabling everywhere... it's quite a sight.

To see some other shots of our wiring closet (it's just full of surprises), visit the MUSEUM section of this site. If you'd like to read a good tutorial on the TCP/IP protocol suite, visit the Rutgers University Introduction to the Internet Protocols.

There's nastassja to your right. Right underneath it is a nice AT&T hub, the StarLan 10, called hubba. That's because nastassja makes us say hubba. If you don't understand why, take a look at the poster of Nastassja Kinski we have hanging in our lounge. Sorry we can't show you out lounge (sekret eleet infoz), but you can visit our FRIDGECAM for some behind-the-scenes views. On the left side of this picture is a few rolls of CAT5. By the time you read this, it will probably all be gone. Damn we use a lot of cable. If you're wondering what that funky red cable is, it goes to David's laptop, which (surprise, surprise!) is called david. This shouldn't shock anyone who knows David's infamous E-mail address, david@david.com.

This is david. Unfortunately, we don't have an actual image of david, but the image here is of an IBM Thinkpad 560 just like his. Is it annoying you yet that David and david have the same name? Internet FYI #5 says it best:

It is especially tempting to name your first computer after yourself, but think about it. Do you name any of your other possessions after yourself? No. Your dog has its own name, as do your children.

Right now, david is running Win95, but soon (we hope) it will be dual-booting Win95, and at least one flavor of UNIX. We're going to make David into a UNIX junkie like the rest of us. To find out more about David (the person), visit the ABOUT US section of this site.