tel@hound.UUCP (T.LOWE) (09/28/88)
We are setting up a Starlan Network consisting of 9 AT&T 6386E WGS systems and one 3b2/600. All systems are running UNIX(tm). All systems will be equals. i.e. we won't have a single server. If one system goes down, the rest of the network will continue to run. This is going to be a 24 hour a day operation that will eventually be working with the long distance network. Therefore, we MUST have backups and duplicates of every component the entire system will rely on. So far, the only unresolved component is the physical STARLAN network. If that goes down, we lose the whole system. We are now looking for ANY ideas for backing up this network. So far, we have come up with a simple senario of A-B like switches where we can manually go in and switch to a different physical network. What we would love to have is both STARLANS running concurrently, sharing the load until one goes down at which time the working STARLAN takes the full load. From what I've been told, it isn't possible to have two STARLAN boards active in a 6386 or 3B at the same time. Maybe there is a 'black box' out there somewhere that does what we want. This 'black box' could be a PC or whatever. Any other ideas would be greatly welcomed. Please send me mail or give me a call. I will be glad to talk to anyone! Thanks! -- Tom Lowe tel@hound.ATT.COM or att!hound!tel 201-949-0428 AT&T Bell Laboratories, Room 2E-637A Crawfords Corner Road, Holmdel, NJ 07733 (These are my very own copyrighted views and no one elses)