roger@celtics.UUCP (Roger B.A. Klorese) (10/14/87)
Does anyone know of a product providing an Ethernet-to-Hyperchannel gateway? I'm looking for a "black box" to sit on an ethernet and pass TCP-IP and its friends in both directions. -- ///==\\ (Your message here...) /// Roger B.A. Klorese, CELERITY (Northeast Area) \\\ 40 Speen St., Framingham, MA 01701 +1 617 872-1552 \\\==// celtics!roger@necntc.nec.com - necntc!celtics!roger
shor@sphinx.uchicago.edu (Melinda Shore) (10/14/87)
In article <1822@celtics.UUCP> roger@celtics.UUCP (Roger B.A. Klorese) writes: >Does anyone know of a product providing an Ethernet-to-Hyperchannel >gateway? I'm looking for a "black box" to sit on an ethernet and >pass TCP-IP and its friends in both directions. No offense, but ha, ha, ha. We're in the same position, since we need to run TCP/IP on our Cray and we get to the machine through the Hyperchannel, and the whole thing has been pretty aggravating. Don't bother talking with NSC, they don't even have their IP-able driver in alpha-test yet. It turns out that most of the people in the world who do this use a Sun. John Lekashman at NASA-Ames has modified 4.3 if_hy.c so that actually works on a macro-Vax (Unibus), and I've almost finished hacking that up to work on with a PI12 on a microVax. John's driver is available for anonymous ftp from orville.arpa. Contact me if you want the microVax version. As far as I know, nobody has come up with any kind of standalone bridge. -- Melinda Shore ..!hao!oddjob!sphinx!shor Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center shore@morgul.psc.edu
wade@violet.berkeley.edu (Wade Stebbings) (10/15/87)
> Does anyone know of a product providing an Ethernet-to-Hyperchannel > gateway? I'm looking for a "black box" to sit on an ethernet and > pass TCP-IP and its friends in both directions. We dedicate a Vax 750 for this purpose, but I hear that Network Systems is going to offer an ethernet adapter soon. Unfortunately, this is all I know about it. Check with your local NSC rep. Wade Stebbings CFC -- UC Berkeley wade@violet.berkeley.edu
dave@rosesun.Rosemount.COM (Dave Marquardt) (10/15/87)
In article <1822@celtics.UUCP> roger@celtics.UUCP (Roger B.A. Klorese) writes: >Does anyone know of a product providing an Ethernet-to-Hyperchannel >gateway? I'm looking for a "black box" to sit on an ethernet and >pass TCP-IP and its friends in both directions. We just met with a Network Systems Corp. salesman this week, and NSC themselves now have Hyperchannel-Ethernet bridges. Here's a short description of some products: EN601: Bridges Ethernets over HYPERchannel-10(r) (10 Mbps media) EN602: Bridges Ethernets over HYPERchannel(r) telecommunication links (up to 2 Mbps) EN603: Bridges Ethernets over HYPERchannel-50(r) (50 Mbps) EN641: The IP Router EN641 from Network Systems(r) provides a gateway between Ethernet networks and HYPERchannel(r) networks. This gateway creates an internet, or backbone, among local workstation networks and high-performance mainframes attached to HYPERchannel(r). HYPERchannel is a registered trademark of Network Systems Corporation. Dave
kline@UXC.CSO.UIUC.EDU (Charley Kline) (10/15/87)
Network Systems just announced their IP router product, I believe it's
called an EN610. Availability is 1Q88, it's in Beta test right now.
You get four ethernets and a Hyperchannel-50 in the box, which runs IP
routing code. The routing program is gated. From the alpha test rig I
saw up in Brooklyn Park it performs quite well... I saw it moving above
2000 packets per second between a Hyperchannel and an Ethernet.
As they say, contact your local NSC rep.
-----
Charley Kline
University of Illinois Computing Services
kline@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu
kline@uiucvmd.bitnet
{ihnp4,uunet,pur-ee,convex}!uiucuxc!klineddp+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Drew Daniel Perkins) (10/15/87)
Just last week or so, I got some advertising blurbs from NSC claiming that they now have Ethernet to Hyperchannel Bridges AND IP gateways. I also read it in atleast two trade rags. I am very curious where they got their gateway implementation. Did they write it from scratch, or are they OEM'ing it from one of the other vendors (Proteon, CISCO, Bridge, etc.)? Their boxes supported something like 5 ethernets at a time, according to what I read. Did anyone else get one of these announcements? Drew
lekash@ORVILLE.ARPA (John Lekashman) (10/16/87)
This box is done by NSC from scratch. You will get a real evaluation of it in a couple of months after we get one. Its scheduled to arrive in a finite number of weeks, (like 3 from now) here. As to ether-hyper gateways, one is still stuck with using either a sun or a vax. Some folks at Pittsburgh (Melinda Shore at PSC if you missed the last message) are busy doing it for a microvax. There was a bit of harshness at NSC in that previous message, they are trying, its just that IP is a relatively new technology to them. After all, they're coming out of the IBM mainframe device connect area. They have expressed to me a commitment to really follow through on IP support. Anyone who has worked in the commercial world knows that it takes some period of time to come out with new products. We received this commitment about eleven months ago. I think that this is fairly fast response, especially on something like new hardware. john
chris@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU (Chris Johnston) (10/16/87)
In article <1822@celtics.UUCP> roger@celtics.UUCP (Roger B.A. Klorese) writes: >Does anyone know of a product providing an Ethernet-to-Hyperchannel >gateway? I'm looking for a "black box" to sit on an ethernet and >pass TCP-IP and its friends in both directions. Yesterday I was reading the Oct 1 Electronics. (I'm way behind on my reading.) It had an article about a new ethernet hyperchannel router from Network Systems. Fully configured ($50K) it will handle 8 ethernets and 2 hyperchannels. They claim it will handle 10,000 packets per second. The EN641 is an IP router. The EN60X is a bridge. The same issue of Electronics says AMD has announced a 200 Mbit/sec FDDI chip set. cj
ddk@beta.UUCP (David D Kaas) (10/17/87)
Network Systems Corp. has products that will connect Ethernet to Hyperchannel. EN60x Bridge for Ethernet to Ethernet over a Hyperchannel link. IP router En641 as an Ethernet to Hyperchannel gateway. They support tcp/ip for some hosts (vm, mvs, vms...) I think these have been released in just the last few weeks. They are supposed to be up and working? -- Dave Kaas - D.O.E. Richland, Wa. e41126%rlvax3.xnet@lanl.gov
Mills@UDEL.EDU (10/17/87)
Melinda, Linkabit built a HYPERchannel driver for the fuzzball. I don't think you really want to know that, since a Craymonster could instantly reduce a silly LSI-11 to a husk, but I thought it would be fun to establish the fact. Come to think of it, the uVAX would lose a little juice as well. Dave
ras@rayssdb.RAY.COM (Ralph A. Shaw) (10/19/87)
We at Raytheon have had some experience with the Hyperchannel products, in particular the BC601, or EN601 as it is now known. While I do not speak for the larger group of sites within the company, I'll try and bring up some of the problems we think we have run into with the EN601 product. This is merely using the Hyperchannel bus as a carrier, and allowing ethernets to talk to each other, and is not performing any type of gateway/protocol translation facility between the TCP, DECNet, XNS or other protocol machines and the NETEX/BFX machines. We have a number of different locations scattered throughout Mass and this site in RI that are interconnected via both A-Hyperchannel and B-Hyperchannel equipment over T1 lines. Some of the locations are tied together with Bridge GS3/M's, some with Vitalink Translan's, some with the AT&T ISN "EBIM" adapters, and 5 locations with the NSC EN601's, all presumably as part of an evaluation and/or production installation, both of which add up to sites in at least 10 towns on an extended ethernet; (total net population: 300+, 70% DECNet) To make a long story short, many of the problems we have had have been related to having such a widely spread out extended LAN. One of the failings of the EN601 is the lack of visibility into what is going on, in the way of maintenance and diagnostic aids as an ethernet bridge, compared to the Bridge/Vitalink style of products. Another problems may result in an inconsistency of loop detection algorithms between the different vendors' bridges (while Bridge/Vitalink are supposed to cooperate). Yet Another situation (which is still unclear as to it's impact) is the fact that at least multicast packets are batched up into a 4K buffer, and then VC-transferred to each other EN601 in sequence, imposing quite a delay when the BFX traffic is going on (making for very choppy telnet sessions). Anyway, the 601's are still here, and NSC is supposedly working on the problems we have with them, and they have improved them dramatically in the time since we first got them in (we were an early Beta-test), but I think that no matter what they do, the BC601 will always be compromised by the fact it has to time-slice over the HyperChannel. -- Ralph Shaw, Raytheon Co., Submarine Signal Division Portsmouth, RI 02871 ras@rayssd.RAY.COM or ihnp4!rayssd!ras
shore@MORGUL.PSC.EDU (Melinda Shore) (10/19/87)
> There was a bit of harshness at NSC in that previous message, they > are trying, its just that IP is a relatively new technology > to them. I'm not sure which previous message you're referring to. It's quite possible that it's mine. I'm not annoyed with them because they haven't been supporting IP, I'm annoyed with them because our support from them has been such a problem. We've wasted a lot of time because, when given a description of what we're trying to do, they've come up with incorrect configurations and sold us the wrong stuff. Also, this list is the first place I've heard of their Hyperchannel/Ethernet bridges, and we had a meeting with some of their very highly placed marketing and technical people (V.P.s, etc) to discuss their future products and directions, and they never mentioned them. We've had other problems with them as well, but that's another story ... Melinda Shore Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
chris@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU (Chris Johnston) (10/28/87)
I had a meeting last week with Hyperchannel sales people including Dan Friegard(sp?) who is their IP product manager. They have come out with some high performace products for connecting ethernets. The Ethernet Bridges route ethernet over 10 and 50 Mb/s hyperchannel links. (EN601 & EN603) They claim that 10 Mb/s hyperchannel gets better throughput than ethernet because they use collision avoidance instead of collision detection. Aside: Hyperchannel can can run at 10 & 50 Mb/s and can be interconnected using T1, T2, T3, coax, fiber optic and satellite links. Four 50 Mb/s hyperchannels can be run in parallel for 200Mb/s throughput. Cray to Cray tops out at 20Mb/s. The IP router (EN641) speaks EGP, RIP, and HELLO (gated). And handles IP, ICMP, and ARP. It can have from 4-16 ethernets and 1-4 hyperchannels. Peak performance is 2k packets/s per ethernet and 10k packets/s through the router backplane. All this information is from suits (salesman), reality may diverge... Anyone have any real life, hands on opinions of these things? cj -- * -- Chris Johnston -- * UChicago Computer Science Dept * chris@gargoyle.uchicago.edu * 1100 East 58th Street * ...ihnp4!gargoyle!chris * Chicago, IL 60637 * johnston@uchicago.BITNET * 312-702-8440
alan@mn-at1.UUCP (Alan Klietz) (10/31/87)
In article <784@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU> chris@gargoyle.uchicago.edu (Chris Johnston) writes:
<[Hyperchannel Ethernet router] performance is 2k packets/s per ethernet and 10k
<packets/s through the router backplane.
<
<All this information is from suits (salesman), reality may diverge...
<
<Anyone have any real life, hands on opinions of these things?
I've never seen a Hyperchannel deliver a thousand blocks per second,
much less two thousand..
From our experience, the actual sustained rate is 600/sec, assuming
no associated data and no contention on a dedicated trunk. [Measured
between two Crays on a one meter coax trunk.]
The problem is that the internal adapter protocol puts in large
time-delays w.r.t. the transmission rate for collision avoidance.
The salesman must have been taking about virtual ethernet packets
collected into larger Hyperchannel blocks.
(By the way, I've never seen 20 Mbit/sec either.)
--
Alan Klietz
Minnesota Supercomputer Center (*)
1200 Washington Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55415 UUCP: ..rutgers!meccts!mn-at1!alan
Ph: +1 612 626 1836 ..ihnp4!dicome!mn-at1!alan (beware ihnp4)
ARPA: alan@uc.msc.umn.edu (was umn-rei-uc.arpa)
(*) An affiliate of the University of Minnesotadcrocker@TWG.ARPA ("Dave Crocker") (10/31/87)
This is a couple of weeks late, but... The Wollongong Group's VMS TCP (WIN/TCP) supports ethernet and hyperchannel and IP routing. Dave ------
lekash@ORVILLE.NAS.NASA.GOV (11/03/87)
>From our experience, the actual sustained rate is 600/sec, assuming
no associated data and no contention on a dedicated trunk. [Measured
between two Crays on a one meter coax trunk.]
Measured between two crays running what? We measured 5mbits/second
effective data from silicon graphics workstations running unix to
a cray2 running unix. Using a 4096 associated data, and a little
arithmetic, this is 1220 packets/second. The cray2 has an A130,
the workstation an A400 hyperchannel adapter.
17 mbit/sec was measured memory to memory on TCP on the same
cray2, going out one adapter, and in another. I will admit
that this is thus a somewhat suspect number, but we don't have
a second cray2, yet. jones@NGP.UTEXAS.EDU (William L. Jones) (11/08/87)
How much cray2 cpu was required to run the memory to memory TCP
test at 17 mbit/sec?
William L. Jones
University of Texas System CHPC