servers that support 10000 clients

With such a broad statement, you'll get broad answers. Novell produces server operating systems, as opposed to actual servers. Cisco makes networking equipment. As far as server hardware is concerned, Dell, HP, Sun, Compaq, and IBM all make the hardware. Are you looking for specific model numbers? There are far too many server hardware combinations that would support 10,000 clients to be listed here. What are the clients doing? Is it going to be a web server, mail server, file server, database server, or a combination? It makes a big difference.

Your best bet is to contact various manufacturers and tell them your needs and then let them suggest the hardware. I don't think you'll get what your looking for in this forum.

COMPAQ - Alphaserver GS160 or better running either LINUX or OpenVMS or Tru64 UNIX.

Rick

To add a little to Net Tek's answer, the ability for a given server to handle a given number of clients is going to be based on many factors:

Server hardware: CPU (or multiple CPUs), RAM, disk space

Operating System: Most Network Operating Systems (NOS) currently available will probably scale to 10,000 clients. However, ease of management, available expertise, vendor partnerships, etc. may lead to to one NOS over another.

Backbone infrastructure: If you have 10,000 clients connecting over Cat3 cable at 10Mbps, through 10Mbps hubs, trying to push data over a 56Kbps Frame Relay circuit, no one is going to be happy.

Applications being used (this also ties into server hardware): servers running applications such a email, SQL databases, Web hosting, Terminal Services, etc., tend to need a lot more horsepower than if they are simply providing authentication services or simple file and print sharing.

Net Tek's advice to talk to the vendors and tell them what you want to do is good advice. They know their equipment's capabilities better than any of us (usually).