peter@myst.uwo.ca (Peter Marshall) (12/03/88)
We are being offered Retix bridges that are supposed to be able to forward 6000 packets per second and monitor 12000 per second at the low low price of about us$1850 each. This is significantly less than bridges like DEC's LANbridge. Does anyone have any experience with these units? Are they reliable? Do they get the traffic through? Do they support any reasonable monitoring and management capabilities? What's your experience with these boxes? Any information would be much appreciated. -- Peter Marshall, Data Comm. Manager CCS, U. of Western Ontario, London, Canada N6A 5B7 (519)661-2151x6032 peter.marshall@uwo.ca pm@uwovax (BITNET); peter@julian.uucp -- -- Peter Marshall, Data Comm. Manager CCS, U. of Western Ontario, London, Canada N6A 5B7 (519)661-2151x6032 peter.marshall@uwo.ca pm@uwovax (BITNET); peter@julian.uucp
donegan@stanton.TCC.COM (Steven P. Donegan) (12/06/88)
In article <PETER.88Dec2175654@myst.uwo.ca>, peter@myst.uwo.ca (Peter Marshall) writes: > We are being offered Retix bridges that are supposed to be able to > forward 6000 packets per second and monitor 12000 per second at the > low low price of about us$1850 each. This is significantly less than > bridges like DEC's LANbridge. Does anyone have any experience with > these units? Are they reliable? Do they get the traffic through? Do > they support any reasonable monitoring and management capabilities? > What's your experience with these boxes? Any information would be > much appreciated. Peter (and others) the answers to your questions are: 1)They are less expensive than DEC LANBRIDGE units. Their capability is 100% when doing a black-box/learning bridge function. 2)They are very reliable. Our test units have seen about 1000+ powered on test hours on our live network without lock-up or failure of any type. 3)The traffic gets through properly. This includes (on our live net): Bridge Communications XNS Bridge Communications TCP/IP Novell Ungermann Bass XNS Fairchild fastlink Apollo TCP/IP Sun TCP/IP Daisy TCP/IP DECNET FTP TCP/IP Wollongong TCP/IP XYPLEX TCP/IP and others too numerous to mention... 4) Monitoring and management - the units that I have experience with are black box units, ie they perform a function flawlessly and don't have any bells and whistles. I will soon be evaluating the Retix units that do support filtering and network management hooks. I will be happy to relate my experiences if the net is interested. If any of you have seen the movie INC - I LOVE this job (as the actor reads his ever ascending blood pressure reading) :-)) -- Steven P. Donegan These opinions are given on MY time, not Sr. Telecommunications Analyst Western Digital's Western Digital Corp. stanton!donegan || donegan@stanton.TCC.COM || donegan%stanton@tcc.com
tom@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Tom Easterday) (12/06/88)
We have puchased 6 Retix bridges for our department and will purchase more soon, we also recommend to other departments on campus looking for bridges that they purchase Retix's product. We have had them in place for about 5-6 months and have not had a failure. We did limited testing of throughput when we evaluated the bridge and they seem to handle the load as spec'd. As far as management capablities go, we had a unit with the network management software implmented for evaluation. It was nice except that our Proteon routers will not pass ISO protocols which the Retix uses in its net management software. So we are not using the network management software (maybe someday...). The price is very deceiving ($16XX range in quantity), in my opinion definately a good value. Tom Easterday The Ohio State University Instruction and Research Computer Center (614) 292-4843
eshop@saturn.ucsc.edu (Jim Warner) (12/07/88)
In article <89@stanton.TCC.COM> donegan@stanton.TCC.COM (Steven P. Donegan) writes: > >Peter (and others) the answers to your questions are: > >1)They (Retix bridges) are less expensive than DEC LANBRIDGE > units. Their capability is > 100% when doing a black-box/learning bridge function. I have no complaint with the claim of excellent price:performance relative to DEC. The Retix box is good hardware. Users should be aware, however, that DEC bridges run a spanning tree algorithm that allows them to be wired up in an arbitrary topology including loops. Some of the DEC bridges will place themselves in standby mode and only activate themselves if one of the other bridges or links fails. Retix bridges don't run a spanning tree alogrithm and if you inadvertantly form a loop, you'll find out about it in a hurry. :+) jim warner u.c. santa cruz