acarlson@laurel.math.umass.edu (Adam Carlson) (04/02/91)
Given the size of this post, please respond to me so as to save the huge chunks of it that will invariably be quoted in the responses from floating world-wide. If I receive requests to do so, I will summarize to the net. Thanks to all who are willing to read my ill informed spewing and help me become better informed. Hi, I am relatively new to the world of networking and system administration and am considering alternative solutions to a particular networking problem. I would appreciate any advice from you net gurus out there. Here is my situation. We have a pair of Sun 3/80's running SunOS 4.1 and Yellow pages connected to an ethernet and the internet. We also have 3 onsite PC's (1 286, 2 386's) with another one on the way (386). These are all running MS-Dos. One of them (and the one we are waiting for) are AT&T's and were shipped with MS-Dos and Sys V R3.2. Most of our consultants work on the Sun's most of the time and occaisionally on the PC's. Most of our administrative staff work pretty much exclusively on the PC's. Some of our administrative staff and our consultants have PC's at home as well. We also have some draft printers, a plotter a laser printer a terminal server and a modem (with more possibly coming in in the future). Right now, the peripherals are shared by the Sun's and PC's through a Periph. Sharing device. (A "Buffalo Box", which I highly recommend.) Other than using the PC's as terminals, there is no other communication between the Unix and Dos sides. The goals I wish to achieve are: 1) Have certain information on the PC's accessable from more than just one location. i.e, have our administrative database available to more than just one secretary. At least, I would like to have all the PC's be able to access this information so the Director can look up our current funding situation without having to ask our secretary or borrow the "Master floppy" containing the database. It would be nice for our Unix users to have access to the same information, but they would also need to be able to run Dos programs to use it. Similarly, it would be nice to have transparent access to information on the Unix side from Dos. (Read: Dos file server for Unix and/or Unix file server for Dos) 2) Have that information available to dial-up users from their PC's at home. This is very important. A lot of our people work from home and/or are on the road a lot. It would be really good to be able to dial up and run Systat from a remote PC. (I guess Slip would be one way to go, but it seems a might slow.) 3) Have multiple resources available to the all the machines. (For instance, the Qic-24 Tape drive that the Sun's use to back up the PC's and/or the DC2000 tape drive in one of the PC's available to the others). This includes printers, plotters, modems, terminal servers and backup devices. As well as disk drives or partitions. 4) Maximum flexibility. Our department is characterized by being very chaotic and this is reflected in our computing environment. We may set up a lab with 25 PC's for student use someday soon, and I would like a network to be able to handle that. We have clients with a variety of needs for both hardware and software, and if possible, it would be nice to be able to add machines to the network for some of our on campus clients quickly and easily and then remove them when they are done. Also, we have a variety of hardware types to be supported, at times we have had Mac's, PC's, Sun's etc. here. 5) Support both server-client and peer-peer networking. There may be one big Dos workhorse that we can devote to being a server, but I also want to be able to share resources from all my PC's and hopefully my unix boxes too. 6) It would be preferable not to tie up one machine solely for file server duty. This is not, however a necessity. What I have thought of so far: Getting Sun's PC-NFS or some other such program (I hear FTP Co's PC-TCP is good). And using the Sun's as file servers. This will allow shared data, and with slip remote access. It will also allow resource sharing (printers, modems, etc, but not backup device as far as I can tell.) It won't allow dial up users to use PC programs from a terminal, Resource sharing PC-PC or PC-Sun (Only Sun-PC). Getting a PC Network like Novell or Lantastic. This will allow PC-PC sharing of both files and resources. It will not allow dial-up network access (as far as I know, I could be wrong). It will also not aid in PC-Unix communication as far as file-sharing, resource sharing etc. Getting a PC-Network and using our ATT PC which came with MS-Dos and Sys R3.2 Unix to bridge the Unix/MS-Dos gap. This seems to be the best option so far. It will allow resource sharing in all directions (PC-PC resource sharing, PC-Unix file sharing). It will allow people to dial in to their Unix account and then run Dos applications, which seems like it would be faster than Slip, since you don't have the bottleneck of all disk accesses taking place over a modem line, only terminal i/o. Apparently even a dumb terminal can use it (although graphics obviously wouldn't work and there is some tricky keyboard mapping to be done.) I would have to buy a package on my ATT called SimulTask that let's me do this. I also don't know how well my ATT running Sys V is going to talk to my Sun's running Basically BSDish SunOS. Can they do NFS mounts to each other, for instance? Finally, I have not really taken a good look at the option of getting some OS-independant network like TOPS running. I have no knowledge of these beasts at all. What I would like to know: Aside from comments regarding anything I have already mentioned, I am also looking for 1) new ideas that I haven't thought of 2) specific information about PC-PC, PC-Unix and Unix-Unix (SysV-BSD) networking software, hardware, issues 3) Recommendations for Ethernet cards for the PC's (Since they will almost inevitably need them.) 4) What did I leave out so that I can be more complete in future postings, and think about it now, since I've obviously forgotten to. advTHANXance Adam Carlson -- Adam Carlson | It's good to know that if I behave acarlson@math.umass.edu | strangely enough, society will take Statistical Consulting Center | full responsibility for me. UMass @ Amherst | - Ashleigh Brilliant