barriost@gtephx.UUCP (Tim Barrios) (06/21/89)
We would like to let engineers who cannot physically come in to the work
facility (because of disability reasons, for example) take an Apollo home
with them and do work from home via a phone line. I would like to find
out what other sites' experiences are in this area and what products
are available to accomplish this. Our goal is to make the work network
(hundreds of Apollos and other stuff) look as transparent as possible to
the user at home. A user should be able to do the same things from home
as they can do from work. Also, the user at home should not have to
be his own administrator. That is, we'd prefer that he is able to
login as the same person he logs into at work and not have to know anything
about 'root'.
I have heard about SLIP in SR10.1 which supports TCP/IP across a serial
line (19.2K baud phone line, for example). Here are some of the questions
I have on this topic:
- What capabilities would such a user have?
- I have been told that we could not do Domain across SLIP. Why?
- Could we get close to the same level of transparency with TCP/IP and NFS?
- Would it be possible to have a many-to-many correspondence between nodes
at users' homes and dialin servers at work or does each home node have to
have a dedicated dialin server?
- From anyone who has tried to do this, what modem speed is recommended?
Any information that I can get via mail, follow-up postings, or phone
calls would be greatly appreciated.
--
Tim Barrios (barriost@gtephx)
UUCP: {ncar!noao!asuvax | uunet!zardoz!hrc | att}!gtephx!barriost
AGCS (formerly GTE), Phoenix
(602) 582-7101mishkin@apollo.COM (Nathaniel Mishkin) (06/22/89)
In article <43f2706a.f81c@gtephx.UUCP> barriost@gtephx.UUCP (Tim Barrios) writes: >I have heard about SLIP in SR10.1 which supports TCP/IP across a serial >line (19.2K baud phone line, for example). Here are some of the questions >I have on this topic: > - What capabilities would such a user have? The standard IP services -- telnet, ftp, etc. > - I have been told that we could not do Domain across SLIP. Why? You really shouldn't think of this as "Domain across SLIP". SLIP specifically refers to a way of doing point-to-point IP links over (typically slow speed) serial lines. Domain can run over point-to-point links, but the target is high speed links to connect bridges (Domain routers) to pass traffic between between high speed LANs (ethers or rings). We require that the links be fairly high speed since the Domain protocols expect low round-trip times. (I don't know what the "advertised" minimum speed link is, but it's certainly 56kb or higher.) It has not been a goal to make Domain protocols run across slow-speed links. Thus, while you could in principle put nodes at home, you'd need to spend a lot of money to get them connected. > - Could we get close to the same level of transparency with TCP/IP and NFS? Domain/NFS offers a subset of the features that the Domain file system offers. For example, if you access Domain files via NFS, you'll lose things like type information. Further, I don't know whether people can successfully run NFS (from/to Apollos or otherwise) over slow-speed links. -- -- Nat Mishkin Apollo Computer Inc., Chelmsford, MA mishkin@apollo.com