sob@tmc.edu (Stan Barber) (10/23/87)
This report summarizes the happenings at the 3rd annual Bridge
Communications users' conference held October 20-21 in Monterey, California.
Any opinions expressed, unless otherwise specified, are those of the
author. Furthermore, the author apologizes for any misstated facts.
Principle information given at the conference surround the focus of the new
3Com/Bridge company, the upcoming release of TCP/IP Release 20000, the pre-
announcement of the CS/1-OSI, and new other new products such as the Secure
Bridge Network System, the GS/1-IP for X.25 and the IB/3. These last two
products use the new MCPU20 which is based on the MC68020 replacing the
original MC68000-based MCPU.
William Carrico, formerly the president of Bridge Communications and now
president of the new 3Com corporation, described the new focuses for the
future of the combined companies. He said, the focuses would remain in the
areas of general connectivity (Bridge's strength) and in PC Workgroup
networking (3Com's strength) with the additional goal of integrating the
network management capabilities of the Bridge environment and also adding
whatever other capabilities are needed to the 3Com system to better
integrate it into the Bridge environment. Most of this work seems to be
directed to the XNS protocol environment. The only TCP/IP related
development in this area of Workgroup integration was a discussion of the
use of the PCS/1 product to talk to both the 3Com network and the TCP/IP
network. Also, 3Com is placing much of its development resources in the OS/2
area with the cooperative development with Microsoft of the LAN Manager
and its development effort with 3plus' successor, 3open. When these products
become available, PC workgroups using 3Com software should be able to run
on top of any protocol (TCP/IP and OSI were mentioned in particular).
Therefore, the release of OS/2 seem critical to future development of the
3Com software.
A new release of the TCP software is expected to be available in November.
Release 20000 will support all relevant MIL-STD and their associated RFCs.
This includes the proposed SNAP protocol (it can be disabled). It also
supports the use of the Name Domain protocol as an alternative to the
old IEN116 name protocol that this software has always supported. This release
involves a complete rewrite of most of the modules and the results is a
dramatic increase in performance (30%) over the current release 13000.
Additionally, a new feature has been added. The Macro capability has been
increased to allow conditional macros using if-then-else and case-switch
constructs. This release will not be available for CS/100s with only 256K
of memory. The code is just too large. A subset release will be made
for those servers that has some but not all the enhancements.
On November 2nd, Bridge will announce one of the first (if not the first)
OSI terminal server on the Market. Based around the CS/1 architecture, the
CS/1-OSI implements the OSI VTP standard [specifically, Basic Class VT,
Subset B, A Mode; Telnet Profile. Transport Class 4]. It is expected to
ship around February 1, 1988.
In order to keep up with the demand for faster bridge processing, Bridge is
offering a new MCPU unit which probably will eventually be available on the
entire CS/1-based product line. This MCPU20 is based on the MC68020
microprocessor. It should increase the processor speed between 3 and 4
times the current 68000-based rate. What this means in turn of packets per
second on the ethernet-to-ethernet IB/2 bridge was not discussed. The
MCPU20 is being shipped in the IB/3 and GS/1-IP product. Both these
products provide interconnection between ethernet and the public X.25
network protocols. The IB/3, like all the IB products, provides MAC-level
bridges with filtering capabilities. The GS/1-IP is an IP router for the
TCP/IP protocol over X.25. The MCPU20 is being integrated into the existing
bridge and router line and should be shipping in those product by the
beginning of 1988. Upgrade kits will be available for existing MCPU-based
units in about the same time frame. Use the MCPU20 in the CS/1 was not
confirmed, but is possible.
The Bridge Secure Network System implements user-verification, resource
access control, and secure communications across TCP/IP networks.
Simplistically, it works by encrypting the data segment of each packet and
once this packet is received by the host, it decrypts it for use. The
actual process is much more involved, but very well thought out. Bridge is
applying for NSA Type 1 acceptance for the government version of this
product. An NCS is required to so all the resource access control and user
verification. Currently the product is only available in the form of the
Secure NCS/AT and the Secure CS/50. Secure versions of the CS/200 and IB/3
are planned. I don't know if the methodology used by Bridge is in line with
the same ideas being discussed for secure TCP/IP channels by various
members of the Internet community.
A final item of interest is the new twisted-pair ethernet product from
3Com. It sees to genuinely extend the ethernet cable, not the drop cable as
seen in the 10mb Starlan proposal. This basically means that you could use
twisted pair to reach an area and then bridge to thin-wire, if you need to.
In the futures area, you can expect Bridge to introduce a new line of
products based on a new architecture. This new architecture will have bus
and processor speeds adequate to support the emerging FDDI standard as well
as T-3. This is about 10 times the current capabilities of the original CS/1.
This will happen in 1989. In the meantime, Bridge/3Com will introduce
about 18 new products this year.
Some interesting ideas that were kicked around at the meeting. One that
caught my interest was making the 3Server3 line capable of being NFS
servers. This would make PC networking much cheaper for those who already
use NFS with their Sun installation. This is not a product that 3Com is
working on, but those potential customers should let 3Com know that they
would be very interested in such a product if it were available.
Overall, it was a very informative meeting and well worth the time. The
next meeting may be on the East Coast. Again, those with opinions should
let 3Com know.
Stan internet: sob@tmc.edu Baylor College of Medicine
Olan uucp: {rice,killer,hoptoad}!academ!sob
Barber Opinions expressed are only mine.