rodney@solar.card.inpu.oz.au (Rodney Campbell) (03/15/91)
I may be placed in the position of designing an entire network for a small
(30 - 60 people) Software Research Group. The group will also have a
modest Public Relations Demonstration facility attached to the premises.
The problem which exists is this:
Each developer will have one or more workstations (which also have not
been chosen yet but we will have a mix of Unix Boxes, Apple Macintoshes,
PC's and X Terminals) on his desk as well as having a common shared
resource area with general use machines. We will call this area the
Development Area.
We also have the Demonstration area with a number of machines
including A/V equipment etc.
There will also be a maximum security computer room for the servers
and storage of confidential information.
Now we want to network all of this together such than people in the
demonstration area cannot easily access the development or secure computer
room areas over the network. But we will want to send demonstrative
material (presentations) from the development area to the demonstration
area. We would also like to use a network which will not fail if for
instance some visitor in the demonstration area unplugs a bunch of stuff
or if a developer unplugs his workstation from the wall socket.
We are basically free to use any existing technology for the network
(although we are currently using thin ethernet on coax). Has anyone else
out there encountered such a situation (I'm sure there is) and has a
suggested solution to our network ideals.
We can use any sort of cabling (Twisted Pair, Telephone, Coax, Optical
Fibre) and any routers/gateways/bridges necessary to achieve our purpose.
We currently use a Multigate to connect the Unix Boxes and the
Macintoshes and another file server on the Appletalk network to connect to
the Novell PC world. This seems to me to be a less than ideal solution so
if anyone has any suggestions I would be most interested to hear from you.
We basically want to improve connectivity, simplify administration,
improve security and improve stability and robustness of the network.
If anyone has any ideas at all please Email me and I will
summarize if I get enough responses.
Rodney....
_______________________________________________________________________________
Rodney Campbell - Telecom Aust |MHSnet: rodney@solar.card.inpu.oz.au
Network Services Unit |Snail : 8th Floor, 91 York Street, Sydney 2000.
Customer Applications Research | or PO Box A226, Sydney South 2000, Australia.
& Development |Phone : +61 (0)2 364 3346 Fax: +61 2 262 3813