[nas] Can NAS support multiple users on a server?

[David Morano]

Hugo Lovhoiden wrote :

> Does anyone know if the network audio system can be adapted to a situation
> where you have many users on a _server_?
> 
> We use SunRay1s at work. We have 20-30 users connected to the SunRay
> server. Audio works just fine, as long as the application producing sound
> is running at the server and uses $AUDIODEV.
> 
> But: I can only have one instance of nasd running at any one time (I
> think?). It is configured to use only one audio device -- thus only one of
> our 20 users can use NAS at any given time. Am I right? If so, is this
> inherent in the NAS protocol or in the current implementation of nasd?

Wow !  Good question.  I always wondered about how Sun managed to
multiplex sound out to the SunRay terminals (if they did it at all).  I
guess they decided to retain the idea of having an audio device
('/dev/sound/[0-9][0-9]' whatever) per user endpoint.

Unfortunately, since Sun solved their SunRay sound problem with having
multiple audio devices at the server side they pretty much thumbed
their nose at NAS as a possible solution for that !

Dave Morano
morano at computer.org