peiffer@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU (Tim J. Peiffer) (04/08/89)
I would like to connect a PC fileserver to its clients in another
part of our building. The problem is that when the building was
designed, there was no provision for building video or PC lan in its
network distribution. We need to expand our existing old style PC lan.
Does anybody have a solution? I have several possible solutions, and I
would like to entertain each seperately. Each solution presents its own
drawbacks to the grand scheme of things.
We have thought of Novell net, but because of the extra equipment needed,
this would make an expensive solution.
We have equipment in place to run token ring. Our existing tcp-ip mail,
telnet, and ftp gateway software would have to be rewritten. And again, the
existing cabling does not support this option.
One solution that I thought of, is to make use of our existing Apollo domain
cable installation. Since the direct route for our server to client is
being used for the domain, we would be left with a rather long indirect route.
Are there any distance limitations using a PC lan?
Another possibility is to use our thin-net plant, but then we would have to
worry about the characteristic impedances 75ohm apollo vs 50ohm ethernet. My
concern here is that the already slow PC lan (sorry - IBM pclan is worthless
for *real* work) would probably become saturated with packet retransmission due
to error, thus rendering the whole scheme useless. My only experience with
broadband applications is in the aspect of voice and CW communications gear.
I know that receiver impedence mismatches are detrimental and that transmitter
impedence mismatches are disasterous, but what real problems are there with
mismatches on PC Lan applications?
75ohm F-BNC 50 ohm F-BNC 75ohm
pc FileServer------->||>------>>------>>------->||>---------> PC Lan Cluster
PClan cable existing thinnet PClan cable
How could our existing fiber and repeaters be put to use? Rediculous as
it sounds, I might even find this worthwhile.
------- ------- ------- |Tim Peiffer
/ / / / |Computer Science Laboratories
/ / /------/ |University of Minnesota
/ / / / |200 Union Street
- ---- - |Mpls, MN 55455
|peiffer@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
|rutgers!umn-cs!peiffer