matthews@uswat.uswest.com (John Matthews) (09/07/90)
A group of us at US West Advanced Technologies are currently evaluating twisted pair ethernet concentrators. What we would like to know is what vendors do you know of that have the following features? We are also looking for people that are familiar with Chipcom, Fibermux and ODS that would be willing to share their experiences. These features that I am asking about are not absolutely mandatory, I just want to know what vendors have implemented what features. Alot of vendors we have been talking to claim to support a subset of the features mentioned below. Thanks in advance, John Matthews matthews@uswat.uswest.com Appletalk - It would be nice to have reliable Star Controller functionality incorporated within the same box, but this is mostly wishful thinking. Stability - Ability to withstand shorts in wiring, power supply burnouts, etc. Overall, we need a very reliable concentrator. Multiple Segment Capability - The ability for one chasis to support three or four different logical ethernet segments. These segments will be connected to each other via a router. Node Detect - Whenever a concentrator sees a source MAC address of an ethernet device transmitting that does not match the address registered with that port, send an alert stating what that ethernet address is. We would like the option of also having this port disabled immediately in such a case. A threshold would be nice with this feature so that we could say after seeing X packets with a non-registered MAC address go ahead and disable the port. This would be useful in the case where a network error could look like a bad ethernet address. Node UP Integrity - Whenever the concentrator first sees the line integrity signal go on on a port, start a timer to wait and see if the attached node transmits within a certain amount of time. If it doesn't, send an alert to the network management console and also give us the option of disabling the port. Threshold Shutoff/Warning - We would like to be able to receive alerts whenever given hosts transmit at a rate greater than a given threshold. An extension to this feature that would of great importance would be another threshold with broadcasts. If a given node starts broadcasting higher than a given threshold, send a warning and disable the port. Automatic Port Disable - The ability to disable a given concentrator port whenever the line integrity signal has disappeared for more than a given amount of time. This should have a per port configurable threshold. This would be useful in the case that users unplug or remove equipment without notifying network operations. Equipment is often moved and taps to the network are left wide open. Port Idle Time - The ability to monitor how long each port on the concentrator has been idle. In other words, how long has it been since data was last transmitted from the node connected to the twisted pair transceiver. Generic Access - The ability to telnet into the box and get quick status information. We are often in remote parts of the building or other networked sites and it would be nice to be able to access this equipment easily through the network. Async access is an alternative, but not a good one. Port Level Analysis - Exactly what statistics can your equipment provide for each port? Software Upgrade Strategies - We would like to see a popular boot protocol such as tftp being implemented. Such a protocol must work through our IP routers. SNMP Manageability - Must support SNMP queries and changes. Although some of the features mentioned above could be implemented with an SNMP monitor by polling, we would like alot of these features to work independent of an SNMP management station. If the segment (or any hardware in between) connecting the SNMP monitor ever went out, our security and manageablity would be cut-off.
kwe@buit13.bu.edu (Kent England) (09/07/90)
In article <10898@uswat.UUCP> matthews@uswat.uswest.com (John Matthews) writes: > >A group of us at US West Advanced Technologies are currently evaluating >twisted pair ethernet concentrators. What we would like to know is >what vendors do you know of that have the following features? ... I estimate that the computational power required to fulfill your wish list would be roughly that of a midrange mini or LAN server. LAN hardware should be a little simpler than what you are thinking, in my opinion. Keep the complexity in the end systems and intermediate systems. That idea is the essence of the LAN paradigm over earlier models of networking. Why don't you substitute RS-232 ports for the Ethernet and LocalTalk ports and call it timesharing? :-) --Kent