austins@VIOLET.BERKELEY.EDU (06/21/89)
Rick, I have a question about the following excerpt from your last posting: >The Ethertalk 2.0 or Tokentalk 2.0 software doesn't care which number >you belong to, and will procede to find you a free node on one of >them automatically. Then it saves what your net number is inside parameter >RANM, so that the next time you boot, you will have the same number >and will save the system all the crosstalk of people trying to get a >unique net ID. The only chatter thatmay occur is if a new Mac is installed >on an existing network, as it will procede tofind itself a unique ID, >and store it away. Does the router timeout these assignments? If so, what is that period (is it configurable?) Otherwise, it seems like you could slowly run out of numbers. Consider the situation (albeit unlikely) where new Macs are continually replacing existing Macs in a net. What happens when all of the numbers are assigned and a new Mac arrives? Austin Shelton U.C. Berkeley
REWING@TRINCC.BITNET (06/21/89)
To continue from my last posting, I will answer one question on how Appletalk Phase II does zones, and its interaction with older Macs running Phase I software. Using the Apple Internet Router, or any comparable product by Kinetics or Cayman or hayes, etc., localtalk and phonenet zones are configured ezactly as before. You assign it a net number and a zone, and its happy. For Ethernet or Token Ring networks, in order to get by the 255 node limit, you can assign an Ethernet or Token Ring wire to have several consecutive net numbers, for example, 2-4 would handle about 750 users, while 30-50 could handle over 4000. The more numbers you set aside, the more people you can have. The Ethertalk 2.0 or Tokentalk 2.0 software doesn't care which number you belong to, and will procede to find you a free node on one of them automatically. Then it saves what your net number is inside parameter RANM, so that the next time you boot, you will have the same number and will save the system all the crosstalk of people trying to get a unique net ID. The only chatter thatmay occur is if a new Mac is installed on an existing network, as it will procede tofind itself a unique ID, and store it away. Likewise, since you can have more than one net number on a wire, you can also do so with zones. Router will give you a dialog box that allows you to enter up to 255 (I think) zone names for use on that network. From there, when the Mac is first fired up, it will tell you that Appletalk is now present, and please choose your "home zone". You do this by selecting the network icon inthe control panel, and clicking onthe Ethertalk 2.0 or Tokentalk 2.0 icon. A dialog box will show up allowing you to pick your zone, which shall be your home from now on. You can change this zone later, if desired. Incidentally, because localtalk macs are phase I style, and smaller workgroup sizes, Router will only allow you to assign one zone name to an localtalk network. As I said before, Appletalk phase II packets are now IEEE standard, so that they will not interfere and bog down a mixed enviroment network. Non-macs no longer have to listen to every Mac packet, which was originally considered a broadcast packet to the rest of the world. Appletalk routers still bump the network to deliver RTMP packets about every 10 seconds, but these packets no longer slow down a mixed enviroment network, and have been made smaller in size by eliminating redundancy inthe RTMP information. A final world about Appletalk Internet ROuter. This is a product that can provide network routing, which runs inthe background on a Macintosh, and takes about 150K to itself. It runs on anything, Mac Plus and above, and can simply connect to localtalk networks together (botyh serial ports support Appletalk with this product), or with a Mac II, can handle routing to 6 more Ethertalk or Tokentalk networks for a maximum total of 8 possible networks. It also appears extensible to other types of connections, and will appear to support any Appletalk connection that appears in the Network cdev (we had a copy of Shiva's dialin access which the router recognized, although we haven't tried it yet). It will *not* support DDP/IP routing. This requires a Kinetics fastpath, Cayman Gatorbox, or comparable product. The Mac it runs on need not be dedicated, although if the traffic is high in your workgroup, it is prefered to be dedicated. It can run behind most other things such as mail products and other things. It will run behind Appleshare, although right now it is not recommended because there is a bug in ROuter's statistics printing under Appleshare. If you can deal without printing Router stats, then you'll be fine. Router will cost $395. Any replies, please cc: to me, since I'm not completely up and running on my new system for netnews yet. Thanks. --Rick Ewing Apple Computer Atlanta, GA REWING@APPLE.COM (DO NOT REPLY TO REWING@TRINCC, ITS DAYS ARE NUMBERED!)
korn@anableps.berkeley.edu (Peter "Arrgh" Korn) (06/21/89)
In <Added.AYbeFZS00Ui3QQ=U9b@andrew.cmu.edu>, REWING@TRINCC.BITNET said: > >A final world about Appletalk Internet ROuter. This is a product that can >provide network routing, which runs inthe background on a Macintosh, and >takes about 150K to itself. It runs on anything, Mac Plus and above, >and can simply connect to localtalk networks together (botyh serial ports >support Appletalk with this product), or with a Mac II, can handle routing >to 6 more Ethertalk or Tokentalk networks for a maximum total of 8 possible >networks. It also appears extensible to other types of connections, and >will appear to support any Appletalk connection that appears in the Network >cdev (we had a copy of Shiva's dialin access which the router recognized, >although we haven't tried it yet). It will *not* support DDP/IP routing. >This requires a Kinetics fastpath, Cayman Gatorbox, or comparable product. >The Mac it runs on need not be dedicated, although if the traffic is >high in your workgroup, it is prefered to be dedicated. It can run behind >most other things such as mail products and other things. It will run >behind Appleshare, although right now it is not recommended because there >is a bug in ROuter's statistics printing under Appleshare. If you can >deal without printing Router stats, then you'll be fine. Router will >cost $395. To throw my 2 cents in: I've been playing with the Apple Router for a number of months now; it's an impressive product. I have one up currently routing between two PhoneNet networks, and one Ethernet network, each as it's own zone. It's running on a MacintoshII w/5 Meg of RAM that is also being an AppleShare server. I've noticed no perceptible slowdown in the server, and no dropped packets (over 4 million routed before we brought the machine down to add a few DAs). By it's presence on the wire, our network seems to be AppleTalk Phase II, or at least some portion of it (certainly all the EtherTalk machines), and the Shiva Netmodems are having problems (two 2400 baud ones). Since it hasn't been an announced product yet, and since we haven't used the modems much, I hadn't contacted Shiva yet, but that'll get done soon. I understand from Apple that Router + File Server + Print Server is not a recommended configuration, and that (at least a few months ago) there were a few occasional problems in this setup under very heavy use. I wonder if this is still the case. Reguarding zones: The router & server both claim to be in the Ethernet zone so that file service across the Ethernet is as fast as can be, and any additional delay caused by the Router routing PhoneNet packets internally will be negligable next to the slower speed of PhoneNet. While I haven't checked carefully, I'm fairly sure that the Router doesn't actually broadcast packets that are destined internally across different zones/networks. Our network hasn't gotten big enough to set up multiple Routers. However, some months back I was on a very large network with many many Routers (only back then they weren't called Apple Internet Routers), and saw no problems with interactions between them. This was, however, strictly a LocalTalk network, with no IP on the wire. I must say, I'm surprised that Apple is releasing this product considering it's potential effect on companies like Knetics, Cayman, InfoSphere, and their bretheren. While it doesn't offer all of the services available with products from these companies (no DDP-IP routing; no AFP-NFS mapping; no dial-in access), it seems to be a far more flexible model (plug in a Token ring card, a few EtherTalk cards, two LocalTalk/PhoneNet networks, somebody's fiber-optic connection, etc.) and they can all be routed to and from. The cost of a headless Mac IIcx + Router software compares quite nicely with a Knetics or Cayman box, especially when that machine can also be a server (file or print or e-mail) and interconnects up to 8 different physical networks (at incremental cost, of course). Any reports on how well the Router works when going between two very active Ethernets? Between three of four? Between two or more Token Ring networks? Any idea how the NuBus handles the pressure? It would be interesting to see just how well the Router can work under that kind of load. Peter -- Peter "Arrgh" Korn korn@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU {decvax,hplabs,sdcsvax,ulysses,usenix}!ucbvax!korn