[comp.protocols.appletalk] Mac II as bridge to Ehternet

wnn@DSUNX1.DSRD.ORNL.GOV (W. N. Naegeli) (01/20/89)

Richard Silverman writes:

>  once you set it [a Mac II] up as a gateway, it'll be useless for anything
>  else.

You do not need a Mac II.  A Mac Plus with a SCSI Ethernet device will do or
an SE with a Ethernet card.  I have not tried it on a network with heavy
traffic.  If you have heavy traffic you can probasbly justify purchasing a
Fastpath or Gatorbox.  But it is exactly the situations where these devices
seem excessively expensive considering the amount of use they get. You could
also configure the gateway machine for some other tasks such as a mail server.
Infosphere says that you can install Liaison on an AppleShare server.
If you have a MacII, you will probably still get fairly good performance
with the gateway running even at a considerable load. It doesn't need to
access the disk and LocalTalk's relatively slow speed sets a 'natural' limit
on the load. the 68020 has plenty of capacity considering that the Gatorbox
does do much more than simple AppleTalk routing with a 68000.

Wolfgang N. Naegeli
Oak Ridge National Laboratory