tjh+atalk.errors@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (05/05/89)
In reply to W. N. Naegeli Since I am somewhat of a novice at this form of communication (only having a link to the Internet for about four months), I can offer only some speculations concerning your difficulty in sending mail to this site (charis.chem.rpi.edu). As far as I know charis has an entry in the NIC host list (128.113.21.10); most mail postings come direct, except those that come through BITNET gateways. Perhaps your site has not updated the /etc/hosts file recently... if not, this would explain your transcript of "Host unknown". You might try jtwarden%charis.chem.rpi.edu@itsgw.rpi.edu. In answer to your queries concerning our network, our stars are passive and are separated by about 200 feet. They are directly linked. The spokes vary in length from about 50 feet to 200 feet with the terminating resistors at the end of the spokes. The FastPath4 is a spoke of the "Eastern" star, located ca. 20 feet from the punch block and is situated in an electronics rack containing the Proteon gateway. We have not had problems with nodes not seeing other nodes. We are using a MacPlus/DataFrame combination as an AppleShare File server with print spooling via LaserShare. Network traffic sometimes becomes heavy when a number of jobs sre spooled (especially when the spooled LaserWriter Plus receives an "illegal" PostScript command); communication through the FastPath slows down dramatically. However, if I run TrafficWatch I observe typically about 100 length errors in 20,000 packets - which I think is quite acceptable. Ideally we should add another AppleTalk zone, but as typical for academic institutions we are financially hindered. I hope this information helps you. If any of this is unclear, you should know that I am a physical chemist (laser/magnetic resonance spectroscopy) that got involved in networking by accident...I wanted to connect my lab instrument computers to those in my office and ended up networking a department. Joseph T. Warden Department of Chemistry Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY 12180 Internet: jtwarden@charis.chem.rpi.edu (128.113.21.10) BITNET: jtwarden@rpitsmts