Looking to start up a proxy network. Which of the following dedicated servers would be best for that? * DUAL CORE P4 2.8 Ghz * 1 GB Ram * 160 GB Sata hdd * 6 ips * 1500 GB monthly bandwidth 10Mbps switch port or..... * P4 2.8 Ghz HT * 2 GB Ram * 160 GB Sata hdd * 6 ips * 1500 GB monthly bandwidth 100Mbps switch port Both are same cost, I'm just wondering which would be better for a proxy network. Would it be better to have 2GB of ram and a slower cpu?
This is a real toss up for me because proxy's tend to eat alot of CPU but at the same time ram is great for serving more pages. The dual core CPU system has essentially twice the amount of CPU power available (Dual core is essentially 2 cpu's) On one hand you can turn off things like keep alive (assuming you're using apache) to attempt to reduce the amount of ram you're using. Or you could go the other way and attempt to reduce CPU usage by setting low timeout values on script execution (proxy's love to run infinite loops then time out). Along with that you could also turn on caching systems that use more ram but less CPU.
go with the 2nd option because u get more RAM (+1) and u get a 100mbps pipe. I'm assuming you're running phproxy or zelune. if it's cgiproxy, go with the better cpu.