mishkin@apollo.UUCP.UUCP (08/14/86)
I've read the product descriptions for the DOMAIN/BRIDGE software,
but would still like more information from anybody using it out there
(especially from people at Apollo (I understand they have about 11
rings connected with it)).
What I'm looking for is:
1: How powerful is it (ie how much does it make the 2 rings look
like one?
It is a general-purpose internetworking system (in the same way that
IP is). It is completely transparent to users (except for performance
and the fact that things that depend on broadcast [like "lcnode"] work
only over the local network). You have a node (a DSP80 or DSP90) as
a gateway ("bridge") between the networks. There is some more system
administration involved (maintaining the gateway and the replicated data
base of node names => network addresses, but even this is very automatic).
The performance problems (i.e. the differences in speed between accesses
to nodes on the local network vs. access to nodes on a remote network)
don't seem much more severe than ones I've encountered in other
internetworks.
2: Do both rings connected over the Bridge have their own registries,
or does each ring have to have its own alternate registry and a pointer
to which ring the master registry is on?
Single registry. Note that you probably want at least one registry site
on each network.
3: Does each ring need its own head DOMAIN/IX node (with /etc,
/usr/spool, /usr/lib/uucp directories)?
It's up to you. In general, you don't have to have multiple copies,
but if internetwork connectivity turns out to be a problem (i.e. you
have flakey network links), and not being able to get to, say, "/etc/passwd"
all the time is a problem, you might want to have multiple copies.
However, If you have multiple "/etc"s though, you have to have a scheme
for keeping their contents in sync. Note that it is our intention to
make access to these kinds of "databases" work through a more general
replicated scheme.
-- Nat Mishkin
Apollo Computer Inc.
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