DEG41560@UA1VM.BITNET (Rob Smith) (01/26/89)
Hi,
I need a little advice. We are in the process of getting several Apollo
machines here. We currently have X on two VAXstations here, and will most
likely run X on the new Apollo machines as well. We also will be adding
some PC's to the net. We may arm the PCs with something like Xsight from
Locus to display Xwindows on the PC screens.
By the way, I would like feedback on Xsight and any similar products. Yes,
salesmen can take this as an opportunity to bombard me with letters. I
have had the hardest time aquiring literature on PC - X products. When I
say we in this letter, I mean the University of Alabama. Please take this
opportunity to show your wares. User feedback would also be great.
Anyway, the real question is this: The Apollo salesmen want us to go with
a token ring for the Apollos and PCs. Will this be compatable with X?
I know nothing about networking, so please feel free to correct any
ignorance I have expressed here.
Thanks,
Rob.jec@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (James E. Conley) (01/27/89)
Yes, the token ring works just like the Ethernet as far as X is concerned. However, you should be careful about choosing between the domain ring and ethernet approaches. Domain ring is supposed to be faster (we don't see any appreciable difference) and has been supported by Apollo for a long time so is likely to have been tested better. However, ethernet is nice and standard-- etherfind, protocol analyzers, bridges, terminal servers, and many other things work on ethernet since it is more widely used. We run domain-ring, but I would rather be running ethernet so that we could use more of the tools we have around here. Also, since there are problems with SR9.7 and the gateway code, you should probably run SR10.1 (which is rumored to be shipping RSN). The problem here is that X isn't available from Apollo for SR10.1 yet and probably wont be until April or so. The MIT distribution is kind of clunky on the Apollos too. If you are buying nodes in the near future you may have to wait a while to really get X usage out of them, but Apollo has promised that they will deliver. Another issue is that I'm not sure what version of X Apollo will be shipping. The SR9.7 version is V11R2, I don't know about the SR10.1 version. James Conley Indiana University Computer Science jec@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu