pdg@chinet.chi.il.us (Paul Guthrie) (09/06/90)
We're having a problem with using kermit across starlan. For those who don't know, MS-Kermit has an option to use the NetBIOS serial redirection to log into another machine over the network. First the vitals: MS Kermit 3.0 on 286 and 386 machines, connecting to 386s and 3B2 Model 1080s running StarGROUP 3.2. The network is a StarLAN 10. The problem is that once more than 6 or 7 people log into the 3B2, the throughput of the packets goes down dramatically. Eventually the typists overflow their keyboard buffers and lose characters. We have checked all of the obvious things (4 byte streams buffers, etc), but what seems to be going on is that the overhead of processing each OSI packet is so great the the 3B2 can't keep up. Although Kermit 3.0 seems better than the previous versions (2.2 and 2.3), I think what may help is a terminal emulator that will send multiple characters in one packet, if the typing is fast, so the actual number of packets does not increase (much) with changes of typing styles. So....... can anyone recommend a better terminal emulator that supports StarLAN (or NetBIOS connections in general), or can anyone pass along some pointers of what to tune on the 3B2 to increase performance in this area? I would also be interested in hearing of peoples experiences with using kermit or multiple cu connections over StarLAN, and how many simultaneous connections you have used, and to what sort of host. -- Paul Guthrie chinet!nsacray!paul or pdg@balr.com or attmail!balr!pdg
rkd@rick.att.com (Rajeev Dolas) (09/08/90)
In article <1990Sep05.185037.24422@chinet.chi.il.us> pdg@chinet.chi.il.us (Paul Guthrie) writes: > > [stuff deleted] > >The problem is that once more than 6 or 7 people log into the 3B2, >the throughput of the packets goes down dramatically. Eventually >the typists overflow their keyboard buffers and lose characters. We >have checked all of the obvious things (4 byte streams buffers, etc), >but what seems to be going on is that the overhead of processing >each OSI packet is so great the the 3B2 can't keep up. > > [stuff deleted] > >So....... can anyone recommend a better terminal emulator that >supports StarLAN (or NetBIOS connections in general), or can anyone >pass along some pointers of what to tune on the 3B2 to increase >performance in this area? > AT&T sells another terminal emulator for the StarGROUP software called TE-Works, which is pretty nice. We use either kermit or Te-Works here and find performance from both to be pretty acceptable. On the 3B2 side I would check the # of cu connections, the network traffic level and the also would check the NCLIST kernel parameter. >I would also be interested in hearing of peoples experiences with >using kermit or multiple cu connections over StarLAN, and how many >simultaneous connections you have used, and to what sort of host. We have atleast 15 connections going to out 3B at one time and we never have faced the problem where characters are lost or keyboard buffer is filled up. I have also talked to few customers of AT&T who run lot of kermit sessions to either 6386 or 3b2 servers without any problems. Raj. >-- >Paul Guthrie >chinet!nsacray!paul or pdg@balr.com or attmail!balr!pdg -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rajeev Dolas. Systems Engineer. ..att!rick!rkd. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- __ _______ ___ _______ ------- AT&T NSSC / __ \ |__ __| / _ \ |__ __| -====------ StarGROUP | (__) | | | \ \ \_\ | | -======------ StarLAN/StarWAN | __ | | | / \ __ | | --====------- Technical Support | | | | | | | (\ / / | | ----------- S. Plainfield, NJ |_| |_| |_| \_____/ |_| ------- 800-922-0354 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------