shore@adobe.UUCP (Andrew Shore) (11/08/85)
Anyone have any experience with CS/100 Communications
Servers (ethertips) from Bridge Communications Inc.?
We are thinking of getting them and have a few questions. Our
environment is 4.2bsd VAXen and SUNs and a few other odd-balls
on a 3Com Ethernet. Everything we want to talk to with the
Bridge box speaks TCP/IP (telnet).
Any comments on reliability, service, ease of use, horror stories,
etc., would be appreciated.
We have particular questions about:
* terminal type & termcap establishment
* flow control (disabling it for use with Gosling Emacs)
* hanging other peripherals (e.g., Apple LaserWriters)
off of the box and establishing a connection to them
from a host (e.g., VAX running lpd/TranScript).
This requires two-way communication, end-to-end flow
control, plus the ability to flush and ignore the
current state of flow control when necessary
(e.g. TIOCFLUSH & TIOCSTART). Does such a beast
look like a vanilla tty to the VAX, or are there other
things (e.g., new IOCTLs) I have to know about?
Thanks in advance,
--Andy Shore
Adobe Systems Incorporated
{decwrl, glacier, sun, apple}!adobe!shorescarter@caip.RUTGERS.EDU (Stephen M. Carter) (11/12/85)
In article <813@adobe.UUCP> shore@adobe.UUCP (Andrew Shore) writes: >Anyone have any experience with CS/100 Communications >Servers (ethertips) from Bridge Communications Inc.? > >We are thinking of getting them and have a few questions. Our >environment is 4.2bsd VAXen and SUNs and a few other odd-balls >on a 3Com Ethernet. Everything we want to talk to with the >Bridge box speaks TCP/IP (telnet). > >Any comments on reliability, service, ease of use, horror stories, >etc., would be appreciated. Rutgers has been using them for quite some time now. Before they had TCP support, we used them running XNS like a switch arrangement. I would now consider the TCP code somewhat solid (ie most of the bugs out). Some nice new enhancements are expected in the next release. > We have particular questions about: > * terminal type & termcap establishment Looks like any telnet connection. You may change a number of parameters for oddball terminals and for local command modes. > * flow control (disabling it for usewith Gosling Emacs) You can have either hardware flow control or XON/XOFF. You can select your XON/XOFF characters so they need not be ^S-^Q. You can disable both if you prefer. > * hanging other peripherals (e.g., Apple LaserWriters) > off of the box and establishing a connection to them Yes, we hang Talaris printers from them. Although our Unix implementation is not completed yet, we have some spooling from a dec-20 with little problems. Overall, it is a solid product. Support (both hardware and software) is also good. There are also some rather nifty features that you can use to connect machines that don't have TCP support (via RS232). You may call me if you would like more information on how they are used at Rutgers. -SCarter uucp: ...{harvard, seismo, ut-sally, sri-iu, ihnp4!packard}!topaz!scarter arpa: SCARTER@RUTGERS or SCARTER@RED.RUTGERS.EDU AT&T: 201-932-4700