From: davy@ecn.purdue.edu (Dave Curry)
Subject: X.500 Survey
Reply-To: davy@ecn.purdue.edu
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 19:03:16 GMT

Hi,

Hopefully this is not an inappropriate use of this list.

Here at Purdue University, we are planning to construct a campus-wide
white pages service, primarily for use as an electronic mail address
directory, but also for phone numbers and whatnot.  We're trying to
decide whether to go with X.500 (QUIPU and friends, not a commercial
one) initially, or to do something simpler of a "roll your own"
variety.

I've done some preliminary playing with QUIPU and the WPP stuff, and
with about 12,000 people in the database, it sucks up 25MB of main
memory.  Since our final goal is about 80,000 entries, my figuring
says we're looking at probably 200MB+ of memory for this server to
use.  This would require a less-than-cheap system to run the server
on.  We are also concerned about performance time for general by-name
searches like "whois Joe Blow" from FRED.  Running the 12,000-entry
database above on a Sun 4/490 with 64MB of main memory (and serving
about a dozen diskless clients) takes about 18 seconds
clock-on-the-wall time for a query like that.  If we kick this up to
80,000 entries, will the search time go up linearly as well?

Anyway, to try and help us in our decision-making, we'd like to conduct
a little survey of the folks out there who are actively using X.500
in their organizations.  If you have the time to answer this survey,
we would very much appreciate hearing from you.  I'll be glad to send
a summary to this newsgroup if there is interest.

X.500 Survey:

	 1. What is the name of your organization, and a brief
	    description?

	 2. What are you using X.500 for (electronic mail lookup, main
	    organizational directory, etc.)?  Are you using it on a
	    "production" basis, or an experimental one?

	 3. How many entries are there in your part of the directory
	    information tree?  Does this constitute your entire
	    organization?

	 4. What sort of hardware are you using to provide your X.500
	    service?  How much disk space does the system need for
	    X.500?  How much main memory?  Is it a dedicated system?

	 5. What DSA and DUA(s) software are you using?  How do you
	    have them configured (out of the box, added performance,
	    etc.)?  Do you find them sufficient for your purposes (do
	    people like them)?

	 6. What sort of performance do you see for general "whois Joe
	    Blow" types of queries?  What about more specific queries?

	 7. How do you get the data into your DSA?  Is the DSA the
	    master for the information, or do you construct the DSA
	    data from some other administrative source?  If the latter,
	    how do you handle merging updates from one side to the
	    other?  Do you allow users to change their information in
	    the DIT?

	 8. Do you use any "add-on" software with your Directory, such
	    as "finger"/"whois" interfaces, mail servers, the UMich
	    "sendmail" interface, etc.?  Which ones?  Do they work
	    well?

	 9. Do you find that your users make use of the Directory
	    outside of your organization, now that they have the
	    capability?  If so, do you have any metrics for how much
	    this capability gets used?

	10. Would you be willing to talk with us via telephone if we
	    want more details from you?  If so, what's your phone
	    number, and when's the preferred time for us to call?

	11. If you had it all to do over again, would you choose X.500
	    again?  Likewise, would you choose the specific DSA/DUAs
	    you are using?

	12. Any other comments or recommendations?

Thanks very much for your time.

Dave Curry
Purdue University
Engineering Computer Network
davy@ecn.purdue.edu
(317) 494-3561
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso