wingo@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM (Dave Wingo) (08/14/90)
I am looking for any information you can give me on the terminal server vendorDatability. I know that they relatively new to the tcp/ip terminal business.
Have you had experience with them?
How about in their previous life as LAT terminal server supplier?
Any comments would be greatly appreciated... Thanks in advance....
David Wingo - NCR Corp. Phone (803) 791-6476
wingo@Columbia.NCR.COMcombstm@stat.appstate.edu (08/16/90)
In article <6444@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM>, wingo@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM (Dave Wingo) writes: > I am looking for any information you can give me on the terminal server > vendor Datability. I know that they relatively new to the tcp/ip terminal > business. > > How about in their previous life as LAT terminal server supplier? > As a LAT server from the first server in 1989, the servers have been rock solid for us, with no hardware failures on any of the units. > > Have you had experience with them? We have seven of the Datability servers, all which are dual protocol LAT/TCP-IP oriented. Three of them are 128 port boxes, 3 are 32 port, 1 is 24 port. We also have 29 DECservers (200s) on the same network as the Datability, so we can compare the DECserver to the Datability server. To support our terminals we use RS423 ports, RS232 ports, and an NPT protocol card. The protocol card allows a user on a DECserver to access the TCP/IP service provided by the NPT card in a Datability server. Some of the servers have an intermixed set of 423, and 232 cards. To access the terminal servers we use dial up access, direct modem, direct terminal connection, and have printers hanging off the terminal servers. We also use a Datability server to frontend a 16-line bank of dialup modems. To connect the Datability servers to our network we use thickwire and thinwire connections to ethernet. Datability as a vendor has been very easy for us to deal with. They support what they sell, both from the hardware side, as well as the software side. We ran into a problem in December, 1989, on our network, where a certain type bridge was either passing runt and/or oversized ethernet packets. Datability called into the server at our site to see what the problem was, and immediately applied a patch to the Datability software to trash the invalid packets. In this same situation, we received a complete terminal server replacement to attempt to address this problem, overnight delivery, no charge. We have standardized on the Datability server based on price (as opposed to DEC servers) support, and features. There is no right to copy license to buy as the LAT/TCP comes on a chip in the server. I do not like the idea of buying hardware just to get to buy 1 or 2 licenses to have software to make it run. The boot time for the server is about 5 seconds. This makes it a good candidate for satellite rooms on an ethernet network, which is what we are doing with the servers. Our users are able to dial into our dialin bank and access other hosts on the INTERNET where they have accounts, without signing onto the local host computers. I am not affiliated with Datability, nor do I receive any compensation from them. However, the product is a useful, stable addition to our networking effort at this time on our campus. - Terry Bitnet: COMBSTM@APPSTATE Internet: COMBSTM@Conrad.Appstate.Edu