eda (01/31/83)
My colleagues and I are running in the limits of living with PBX interfacing to our computers. We often need to transfer 20K to 100K files to the very places our terminals reside, and that takes a frustratingly long time at 2400 baud. It seems that a baseband technology such as ethernet might be made to allow the same net bandwidth to the computer to be more dynamically shared between users, so that someone typing, like I am now, would not tie up 2400baud of bandwidth, and the left over bandwidth would be available to someone that wants a 50K file transferred. While there are much more general problems to solve, ours would be solved with something that would talk to a VAX-780 on one end and look like a bunch of high-speed terminal ports on the other (obviously there needs to be a way to switch between one byte per packet and burst mode somewhere). Our VAX is running Berkely--soon to be 4.2. Another solution would be a way to shift modes from being a terminal to talking to a "file server". Anyone who knows where to buy a package that will do a job like I've described--PLEASE SEND MAIL. If I can get some info, I might be able to influence our next budget cycle, and make my job much more pleasant next year.