[smokeping-users] how low can it go?

[Aaron Lewis]

Thanks for all the helpful replies.  This is exactly the type of thing
I want to monitor and track down.  How new drivers, updates to our
code, etc affect latency.  Our system is probably not typical in that
it relies on very low latencies, and in our code we were able to
recently optimize this, and we're trying to squeeze even more in other
places like the network.  Just by running manual pings, I've been able
to detect a 50% latency gain by disabling "checksum offloading" in the
Windows device manager.  Not sure on the full ramifications of
disabling this.


> All windows servers are similar spec with the same NIC. Server 2 is a
> bit slower but 1 and 3 are virtually identical hardware.
> Prompted by this strange variation, I checked settings and discovered it
> was purely the driver versions.
> Whether this will make a scrap of difference in real life - who knows?

I'll be setting up a dedicated smokeping server soon.  Here's the hardware:

1.7 GHz Athlon XP 2000+
480 MB RAM (actually 512 - video)
IDE 60GB hdd

At first I'll be monitoring 10 servers, but would like to do 70 more,
and a few external to our LAN.  See any problems with the planned
hardware?  Can I setup email notifications on thresholds or when a
server becomes unreachable?  Any suggestions on a Linux distro?  I'm
considering the latest CentOS since we're using it on our other
servers, but I'm open to other opinions.  I'm a newbie.  My developer
colleagues do most of the Linux administration, while I do the
Microsoft side, and all hardware duties.

Thanks everyone.