lance@helios.ucsc.edu (Lance Bresee) (02/02/90)
In article <1990Jan29.220022.8013@seri.gov> marshall@wind55.seri.gov (Marshall L. Buhl) writes: > >The 1/22/90 issue of InfoWorld had an article in which they praised Lantastic. >They used it for their mobile newsroom. Has anybody else had any experience >with it? >-- We use that here. It is OK. One machine has to be designated as host, and any shared devices must be physical devices on the host. You can connect as many machines as you want. We chose it because of cost and low memory overhead. lance%helios.ucsc.edu@ucscc.ucsc.edu
dean@image.soe.clarkson.edu (Dean Swan) (02/03/90)
From article <10595@saturn.ucsc.edu>, by lance@helios.ucsc.edu (Lance Bresee): We use that here. It is OK. One machine has to be designated as host, and any shared devices must be physical devices on the host. You can connect as many machines as you want. We chose it because of cost and low memory overhead. Not true. LANtastic does support full peer-to-peer capability. It is unfortunately, not routable, and Artisoft (from what I've been told) has no plans to make it so. -Dean Swan dean@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
marshall@wind55.seri.gov (Marshall L. Buhl) (02/03/90)
dean@image.soe.clarkson.edu (Dean Swan) writes: >From article <10595@saturn.ucsc.edu>, by lance@helios.ucsc.edu (Lance Bresee): > We use that here. It is OK. One machine has to be designated > as host, and any shared devices must be physical devices on > the host. You can connect as many machines as you want. We > chose it because of cost and low memory overhead. >Not true. LANtastic does support full peer-to-peer capability. >It is unfortunately, not routable, and Artisoft (from what I've been >told) has no plans to make it so. I'm planning on ordering this next week. What do you mean by "routable?" A dealer said it didn't support file shipping between non-servers. The dealer seemed to think it is possible to temporarily make yourself a server without rebooting. This helps, but is less than perfect. Is that what you mean? One dealer recommended using Western Digital Ethernet boards instead of the Artisoft boards. He said the drivers were optimized for those boards. We use 3Com boards for our TCP/IP network. Is it worth switching to WD? I need to get this LAN set up and shipped to the field by the end of the month. Unfortunately, I keep coming up with more questions and options. Am I kidding myself about being able to accomplish this? -- Marshall L. Buhl, Jr. EMAIL: marshall@wind55.seri.gov Senior Computer Engineer VOICE: (303)231-1014 Wind Research Branch 1617 Cole Blvd., Golden, CO 80401-3393 Solar Energy Research Institute Solar - safe energy for a healthy future
jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck) (02/03/90)
In article <10595@saturn.ucsc.edu> lance@helios.ucsc.edu (Lance Bresee) writes: >We use that here. It is OK. One machine has to be designated >as host, and any shared devices must be physical devices on >the host. You can connect as many machines as you want. We >chose it because of cost and low memory overhead. I helped a local businessman set up a three-pc LANtastic system. We set up one of the systems as the main file server and Deskjet printer server, and one of the other systems as the dot-matrix printer server. You can have as many servers as you like on the network. Any node can access any device that is on a server system. This is done by providing two separate programs, REDIRECTOR and SERVER. The redirector program allows you to use shared resources as if they are on your own pc. The server program allows other nodes on the network to access devices on your pc. It's a very simple and logical arrangement, and doesn't require much ram. -- John Dudeck "You want to read the code closely..." jdudeck@Polyslo.CalPoly.Edu -- C. Staley, in OS course, teaching ESL: 62013975 Tel: 805-545-9549 Tanenbaum's MINIX operating system.
medici@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Mark Medici) (02/06/90)
I've installed a couple of LanTastic lans for friends. I have found
them to be easy to install and manage, and can be configured to use
very little RAM on both the client and server nodes. There is no
problem using the server as a client, although I'd recommend using
a '386[sx] box and a memory manager such as QEMM or 386max (you can
shove much of Lantastic into "high" RAM, leaving more for your
applications).
The 2Mbps Lantastic adpaters work fine for the LAN's I've set up thus
far (4 and 6 nodes, respectively). I'm not certain which topology
they are, but ArtiSoft claims they're supported by Novell Netware.
You can also run Lantastic over Ethernet (either the 10Mbps Lantastic
or other cards) and other adapters that support NetBios. All this
means that, if you find you've outgrown LanTastic, you can switch
to Netware without replacing the cards.
---
Mark (These are my own opinions and may not reflect the views of my
employers or any other person, living or dead).