percy@amdcad.AMD.COM (Percy Irani) (12/10/87)
We have a Vitalink sales guy trying to sell Vitalink Bridges to our Company. We primarily have TCP/IP hosts on the net. We also have some DECNET hosts. What is attractive to some people (Sigh!) is that the Vitalink's will be able to do protocol independant connections. I guess we can beat the Vitalinks iff there is a router that does both IP and DECNET. IS THERE ONE AVAILABLE LIKE THAT TODAY???? ------------------------------------------ Also, the Vitalink sales and tech support (I beleive the sales guy talked to them) do **NOT** understand the problem of "Ethernet Meltdown". Has *anyone*, yes anyone, encountered this problem using bridges? Also, to be specific, has anyone, encountered this problem using Vitalink boxes? (DEC sells Vitalinks too!!). (Come on some one from DEC can shed light on that!!). Besides, our friends do not understand the advantages of alternat routing (routed type), support of triangles in a net instead of spanning trees....... Sigh! -- Ignorance is bliss but can be embarassing at times!
ron@TOPAZ.RUTGERS.EDU (Ron Natalie) (12/11/87)
Yes, we've encountered meltdowns and broadcast storms across bridges. Watch for Chuck Hedrick and Len Bosack's article on such network phenomena in an upcoming IEEE Network Magazine. We do run IP and DECNET through our CISCO routers. I don't know if CISCO has made it a product yet (although it is likely that they will). Also Proteon, I believe, has already marketed the product. Noel's code has always been aimed at multiple protocol support (originally IP/CHAOS). As a slight bit of humor, when hooking up my sun, I managed to crash every VMS machine at Rutgers (including two in NEWARK that were 20 miles away) because all the VMS machines (being primarily DECNET speakers) were on the data link repeated parts of the Rutgers net. -Ron
haas%gr@CS.UTAH.EDU (Walt Haas) (12/11/87)
In article <19509@amdcad.AMD.COM>, percy@amdcad.AMD.COM (Percy Irani) writes: > > We have a Vitalink sales guy trying to sell Vitalink Bridges to our > Company. We primarily have TCP/IP hosts on the net. We also have > some DECNET hosts. > > What is attractive to some people (Sigh!) is that the Vitalink's will > be able to do protocol independant connections. I guess we can beat > the Vitalinks iff there is a router that does both IP and DECNET. > > IS THERE ONE AVAILABLE LIKE THAT TODAY???? > ------------------------------------------ There are at least two, cisco and Proteon. However the real advantage of level two bridges like the Vitalink is that they let you also run ISO, XNS, Ethertalk, Novell and what have you with no further modification. Given the dynamic state of protocols today this is a big advantage. For example, the low level protocols of DECnet will change drastically next year. Proteon and cisco may or may not keep up, but a level two bridge won't even notice. Cheers -- Walt Haas arpa: haas@cs.utah.edu uucp: ...utah-cs!haas
TS0400@OHSTVMA.BITNET (Bob Dixon) (12/11/87)
We are using Proteon routers with tcp/ip and decnet today, and very
successfully.
Bob Dixon
Ohio State University
Acknowledge-To: <TS0400@OHSTVMA>leiner@riacs.EDU (12/11/87)
Proteon makes a gateway that can deal with both Decnet and IP (so they tell me). NASA is exploring their use in the NASA Science Internet. Barry
chris@ACC-SB-UNIX.ARPA (Chris VandenBerg) (12/12/87)
In response to Percy Irani and his obvious disgust for MAC-level bridges I would just like to emphasize(as I do to potential Customers when I talk to them) that bridges are not THE solution for every problem. But they certainly DO have their uses and to deny that is a blatant system adminstration power play. I would like to believe that an approach different from Percy's is not "ignorant" but just that, different! Not all network managers want to open each day with a careful scrutinization of the routing tables(how shall we route traffic TODAY?). Many just want to plug it in and forget it(at least at the LAN level. Bridging to the great, big world is another issue entirely...). Many customers must feel this way because ACC and others are selling LOTS of MAC-level bridges. I think most people would agree the BROUTER question may not be resolved for quite a while. It's all clear as mud to me... Chris VandenBerg Applications Engineer Advanced Computer Communications (chris@acc-sb-unix.arpa)
davew@gvgpsa.UUCP (David C. White) (12/13/87)
In article <8712110937.AA06638@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> TS0400@OHSTVMA.BITNET (Bob Dixon) writes: >We are using Proteon routers with tcp/ip and decnet today, and very >successfully. We are using the Vitalink T1 type bridges, because we have several sites scattered around the Grass Valley/Nevada City area, and we are using TCP/IP, DECnet, XNS, 3Com, and some strange TCP/IP stuff occasionally output by our Cadnetix workstations and everthing passes transparently through the Vitalinks with no problems. We also have a DEC Lanbridge stuck in between two of of networks and it seems to be able to pass all of the above protocols also. -- =================================================================== Dave White Grass Valley Group, Inc. P.O. Box 1114 Grass Valley, CA 95945 UUCP: ...!tektronix!gvgpsa!davew PHONE: +1 916 478 3052