dixon@gumby.paradyne.com (Tom Dixon) (05/17/89)
I am interested in getting some information on a product called Micom Interlan. From what I understand, it is a pc board which goes into a Novell server and gives TCP/IP access to all of the novell clients. Am I way off? (email replys please, I don't read alt.bozo ;-) ) But anyway, if you know who in the Tampa Bay area would handle such a product, please email me their name and phone number. Or better yet if you are a micom rep, call me or email or whatever. Or if you have horror stories, reports, or any information about this product, I would be interested in hearing about it. Tom Dixon Software Engineer, AT&T Paradyne. uunet!pdn!dixon (813) 530 8358
jbvb@ftp.COM (James Van Bokkelen) (05/17/89)
In article <6100@pdn.paradyne.com>, dixon@gumby.paradyne.com (Tom Dixon) writes: > I am interested in getting some information on a product called > Micom Interlan. From what I understand, it is a pc board which > goes into a Novell server and gives TCP/IP access to all of the > novell clients. The company is Interlan (they were a division of MICOM for a while, then went independent, and were just bought by Racal). Their HQ is in Boxboro, MA. The product is an Ethernet board and software for the Netware server. It gateways (high-level translation) between IPX protocols from the workstation and TCP/IP to some other machine. It supports Telnet and FTP from the workstation, and incoming FTP to the server from other TCP/IP hosts. A server can handle 16 connections, but they do slow it down. You have to supply your own terminal emulator for the Telnet on the workstations. This approach is fine if you don't mind the limit of 16 connections, or the TCP/IP is satisfactory (it didn't support domain naming last I knew, and required manual route-add commands for each off-subnet host), or you only need the applications they supply. This approach is required if your Novell network uses Omninet or something else that IP isn't widely used on. Another aproach is to modify the Netware on the workstation to support sharing the network interface with other protocol stacks, and letting the TCP/IP run on the workstation itself. Our PC/TCP and Excelan's EXOS205 products get their Netware compatibility this way. This is faster, and doesn't add any load to the server (the packets go straight to the TCP/IP destination), and you get a wider range of TCP/IP applications. It does require that the LAN be something that IP is widely used on, like Ethernet, Starlan or 802.5. A third approach was implemented by Wollongong, where they encapsulate IP datagrams in NETBIOS datagrams, and send them from the workstation to a dedicated PC-based IP router that forwards them as normal IP packets. This works on any network and doesn't load the server, but it requires a dedicated PC, and will be slower than the direct connection. -- James B. VanBokkelen 26 Princess St., Wakefield, MA 01880 FTP Software Inc. voice: (617) 246-0900 fax: (617) 246-0901