[comp.dcom.modems] SL/IP capable terminal servers

njs@scifi.UUCP (Nicholas J. Simicich) (12/14/89)

I'm interested in user experiences (and calls from salesmen, frankly)
regarding lan attachable terminal servers (Ethernet or token ring)
which can do both telnet and SL/IP.  The two brands I've heard of so
far are Cisco and Annex II.  Any others?  Any user experience.

My phone number is (914) 789-7033.  Addresses are in the signature.

-- 
Nick Simicich --- uunet!bywater!scifi!njs --- njs@ibm.com (Internet)

dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer) (12/18/89)

In article <993@scifi.UUCP> njs@scifi.UUCP (Nicholas J. Simicich) writes:
>I'm interested in user experiences (and calls from salesmen, frankly)
>regarding lan attachable terminal servers (Ethernet or token ring)
>which can do both telnet and SL/IP.  The two brands I've heard of so
>far are Cisco and Annex II.  Any others?  Any user experience.

Yeah.  I've been using an Annex as my gateway for about a year.
It's pretty good as a SLIP server.  The drawback is that it doesn't
advertise my net using RIP (I have to have a hacked-up 4.3 system
run a proxy RIP daemon pointing other machines to the Annex box
for my subnet) and I've haven't had much luck running routed on my
SLIP machine so that the other machines on my local net are reachable--
the Annex appears to crash when I run routed on my SLIP/ethernet gateway
machine, and I haven't figured out how to install a static route
on the Annex.

Now, I haven't had the energy to chase this thru Annex software
support.  The annex box isn't owned by me.


-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
dyer@arktouros.mit.edu, dyer@hstbme.mit.edu

miw@bunyip.cc.uq.oz (Mark Williams) (12/18/89)

njs@scifi.UUCP (Nicholas J. Simicich) writes:

>I'm interested in user experiences (and calls from salesmen, frankly)
>regarding lan attachable terminal servers (Ethernet or token ring)
>which can do both telnet and SL/IP.  The two brands I've heard of so
>far are Cisco and Annex II.  Any others?  Any user experience.

	You will also need to ask what other goodies are included. For
Example, Annex do a full routing SLIP with RIP, etc. (Not to mention PPP
, and no doubt soon RPC, NFS, database services, and everything else we
bought terminal servers to get out of worrying about.. :-) )

	Some Cisco SLIP implementations are end-node SLIP only. (i.e.
you can connect a node to a network, but not two networks)

	I have heard that Xyplex's next software release will nclude a
routing SLIP, but that there will be no RIP - just static routing.
(Which is ok if there are only one or two IP networks on connected via
the SLIP link)

Mark Williams
miw@cc.uq.oz

Network Engineering,		University of Queensland
Prentice Computer Centre.	Brisbane, Auatralia

dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer) (12/18/89)

In article <910@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM> dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer) writes:
>Yeah.  I've been using an Annex as my gateway for about a year.
>It's pretty good as a SLIP server.  The drawback is that it doesn't
>advertise my net using RIP (I have to have a hacked-up 4.3 system
>run a proxy RIP daemon pointing other machines to the Annex box
>for my subnet) and I've haven't had much luck running routed on my
>SLIP machine so that the other machines on my local net are reachable--
>the Annex appears to crash when I run routed on my SLIP/ethernet gateway
>machine, and I haven't figured out how to install a static route
>on the Annex.

A couple of people have pointed out to me that Annex software release 4.1
is very robust and should not crash.  My experience was with a pre-4.1
release.  In fact, on the basis of their responses, having checked that
the Annex was now running 4.1, I tried running routed again on my SLIP/ethernet
gateway machine today with great success. I've also been told that Proxy-RIP
isn't needed provided you RTFM for the new release, so I'll plan on looking
at that this week.

Once these are solved, an Annex box makes a great SLIP server.
(In fact, it was a fine SLIP server earlier; it just wasn't a complete gateway.)

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
dyer@arktouros.mit.edu, dyer@hstbme.mit.edu