morrison@nucsrl.UUCP (Vance Morrison) (09/26/87)
I am trying to get some general information about good LANs and how they connect to the larger networks (TCP-IP ethernets). I work for Northwestern University and we are trying to network together all the faculty in our engineering building. The immediate need is to provide electronic mail, but undoubtedly file transfers, and remote login sessions will follow. I figgured that many universities and companies must have already done this and wanted to pick the brains of the people who set this up. The situation we have is: 1) The offices to be connected all have free twisted pairs back to a phone closet. Thus networks based on twisted pair are the only feasible solution 2) IT IS A REQUIREMENT that the network interface with the TCP/IP ethernet type network. So there MUST be some form of gateway box available that will connect the local network to the world at large. 3) A majority of the offices will have IBM like PCs, but some have Macs or dumb terminals. So solutions MUST work for PCs and it would be a plus if it works for Macs, dumb terminals as well as bigger workstation machines (SUNs). It seems to me that this would be a fairly common set of requirements, so hopefully someone out there has a good solution. If you have any good ideas, please send them directly to me (and if you want post them). Thanks Vance Morrison Northwestern University
ron@topaz.rutgers.edu.UUCP (09/28/87)
The Proteon PRONET runs over two twisted pair and a ground, although I give no guarantee as to how well it will work over phone pairs. It works just fine given the cables that proteon sells. Interfaces are available for most of the popular systems. We used this for our IP backbone at BRL. -Ron