claman@isl.Stanford.EDU (Larry Claman) (03/20/90)
I am currently researching the design and implementation of a global WAN
to interconnect Macs and PCs. I am considering a number of solutions,
one of which is bridging Novell lans. However, a number of people
have expressed skepticism that Novell can support a global WAN, namely
due to the limitations of IPX.
For example, suppose you have four nodes connected in the following manner:
Boston T1 London
X-----------------------X
| |
| Leased | Leased
| Line | Line
| |
X X
New York Paris
Now suppose most of your traffic was from New York to Paris. From
what I understand, Novell has no way of monitoring traffic so you
can figure out that you should move the T1 link to bridge NY to Paris.
Novell's global naming service is coming in a few months. This will
supposedly allow better wide area connectivity, but as far as I know
it will not solve the problem described above.
I would like to know if anyone has experience with implementing a
global Novell WAN or if anyone has any opinions on why it would or
would not work. War stories are appreciated.
I will summarize & post responses.
Thanks,
Larry Claman
claman@isl.stanford.edudixon@gumby.paradyne.com (0000-Tom Dixon(0000)) (03/21/90)
In article <27@isl.stanford.edu> claman@isl.Stanford.EDU (Larry Claman) writes: >I am currently researching the design and implementation of a global WAN >to interconnect Macs and PCs. I am considering a number of solutions, >one of which is bridging Novell lans. However, a number of people >have expressed skepticism that Novell can support a global WAN, namely >due to the limitations of IPX. > >For example, suppose you have four nodes connected in the following manner: > > > Boston T1 London > X-----------------------X > | | > | Leased | Leased > | Line | Line > | | > X X > New York Paris > >Now suppose most of your traffic was from New York to Paris. From >what I understand, Novell has no way of monitoring traffic so you >can figure out that you should move the T1 link to bridge NY to Paris. Don't know about novell. I do know that Cisco Routers support Novell Routing (and bridging), and that novell routing traffic is monitered in general, but not port by port. If you had a cisco at each location, you could monitor the through traffic and locate load. Cisco's Novell routing works well from what I've seen. It works like the servers, you address each net uniquely, and it advertises and sets up the net with the servers. It is not a bridge and will save you lots of bandwidth in the setup you propose in traffic isolation. One thing though. Remote server access across a T1 is slow. I recently spent time at our remote site and did software development over our 1/2 T1 link. It was not quick by any stretch of the imagination. From what I saw using 760K bps, 56K would be painful. 19.2K would be out of the question. I hope the leased line connection in you diagram is Digital. Otherwise, you are going to hate what you get. Have fun Tom Dixon dixon@pdn.paradyne.com