We're (still) looking for a new SAN , so I haverecently been doing some work with a homebrew iSCSI testing environmentbuilt from ordinary servers. The experience leaves me with a simplequestion: why does anyone buy special iSCSI accelerator networkcards?

(These are sometimes called 'iSCSI HBA cards'.)

I ask because my ordinary test environment, with commodity server NICsand no tuning besides 9,000 byte jumbo frames, can basically saturategigabit Ethernet doing bulk reads over iSCSI. Through the

Here is a thesis: Python being a very 'computer science' language is a good part of the polarized reactions it often gets.

The necessary flipside of being regular and predictable is that Pythonis also rigid and what I will call 'solid': it is not just rigid inseparate, independent pieces, it is rigid all through, which comesnaturally from the rigorous expansion of its core concepts through thelanguage (and from how they tend to interlock).

If the core concepts resonate with you, then the