peter@julian.UUCP (10/19/87)
We have couple of buildings that happen to have some spare 50 micron fiber cable between them. We want to use this cable to link a set of ethernets via IP gateway boxes (probably Cisco systems). One product that was recommended to us (by Cisco systems) was the model 3030a modem from Codenoll (us$795 each). This seems like a very reasonable price for a 10Mb/sec modem. I'm looking for sites that are using these modems to get some idea about how well they work. Anyone using them? -- Peter Marshall, Data Comm. Manager CCS, U. of Western Ontario, London, Canada N6A 5B7 (519)661-2151x6032 pm@uwovax.BITNET; pm@uwovax.uwo.cdn; peter@julian.uucp; ...!watmath!julian!peter
ron@topaz.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie) (10/20/87)
We put a pair of FiberCom Whisperlan transcievers into operation recently. These are running over about 2000' of fiber between two buildings here at Rutgers. One end is plugged directly into an IP/DECNET Gateway (CISCO) and the other is plugged into a TCP multiport box which intern has the central gateways (a collection of several CISCO boxes and a VAX 750). The boxes cost about $850 and we haven't had any problem with them. They have the advantage (unlike the Codenol, I believe) of allowing multiple units to be ringed. That is, you can connect three or more of these boxes together using fiber rather than using them as a point to point link. This ends up saving you the price and the overhead of a board in the CISCO box in the middle of the net having to copy packets bridging accross the two fiber segments. There are a number of others coming on the market including one from Optical Data Systems that claims to be selling for under $600. We haven't seen them yet. -Ron
chris@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU (Chris Johnston) (10/28/87)
We have both Cisco gateways and Codenol fiber optic ethernet tranceivers (modems). We have had been using Codenol for 3 years now and have been very pleased with the reliability. We have a fiber optic back bone connected at the center by a passive star. Gateways are at the ends of the fiber arms. Coax and fiber ethernets radiate from the gateways. This is a very good topology (no loops). And extremely reliable technology (no midnight cable taps destroying your network). The gateways protect your backbone bandwidth from most net nonsense. For us this has been a low cost, low maintainance, high reliability configuration. 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