johnl@ima.UUCP (01/20/86)
To: info-ibmpc at THINK/*USC-ISIB.ARPA, net.micro.pc, net.lan
To: net.dcom
--------
We have about 40 PCs around the office here connected by a 3com Ethernet.
Some of them have modems for dial-out, but we would like to be able to dial
out from a lot more of them. One possibility is to buy a bunch of internal
modem cards for the PCs, buy more analog ports for the PBX, and run them
through the PBX. Another possibility, I suppose, would be to get a data pbx
and run RS-232 cable through the ceiling.
Since all of the PCs are already on the Ethernet, though, what I would like is
a box that plugs into the Ethernet on one side and RS-232 and/or modems on the
other side, along with PC software to play VT-100 speaking over the Ethernet
to the box. I suspect that 4 modem lines or so on the box would be enough.
I gather that Bridge Communications makes such a thing but it sounds kind of
expensive. Does anybody have any experience with the Bridge box or anything
else that might do the trick? I'd prefer something off the shelf, though I
can roll my own if it would save a whole lot of money.
John Levine, Javelin Software, Cambridge MA 617-494-1400
{ decvax | harvard | think | ihnp4 | cbosgd }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.ARPA
The opinions above are solely those of a 12 year old hacker who has broken
into my account, and not those of my employer or any other organization.
--------irwin@uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU (01/23/86)
We have two of the Bridge CS-1s, with 32 ports each. These are very versatile devices. You can purchase one with 8, 16, 24 or 32 ports. If you got one with 8 ports, it could support a rack of 8 modems. It has a floppy, and configuration can be set up such that it scans the 8 ports. You call the scan, via ethernet, it will connect you to the first free or unused port in the scan. All of your PCs could make use of the 8 modems on a share first come first serve basis. We use one of the Bridge units in a building down the street from our main building, giving terminals there access to our machines. We also support a couple of printers at the terminal building on the Bridge ports. The other Bridge, we have in our machine room and have it's ports connected to the ports on two 3B20S machines, so that it can be accessed via TCP/IP from our Vaxens. The hosts tables can be on the floppies, or they can be on a server on the net, such that the Bridge can find it's way to hosts on the cable. It even understands how to find it's way through gateways to subnets. We are very pleased with ours.
dpk@mcvax.uucp (Doug Kingston) (01/26/86)
Here at MCVAX, we have also looked at the Bridge TELNET/TCP boxes and were very impressed. The only problem we found is that they do not support ICMP/ECHO, although they do apparently support ICMP/REDIRECT. We were even able to get them into a truely 8-bit transparent mode suitable for running a BLIT in Layers mode with its host to terminal protocol going over the TELNET connection. It works. We looked at a CS-100 which I believe is just a smaller version of the CS-1. It can take a maximum of 14? lines. -Doug- Doug Kingston Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica Kruislaan 413 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands