[comp.protocols.appletalk] KFPS-II's dying under pressure for Zone requests?

wicinski@nrl-cmf.UUCP (Tim Wicinski) (10/24/88)

Our KFPS-II's seem to have the tendency to die also. SO much in fact, 
we recently tried to ask Kinetics if they had any more KFPS-I's for
sale, as they work the best so far. 

Our network:  We have an unsubnetted class B network that has a large
amount of various traffic.  In addition to a bunch of people running
KIP, we have people running the Pacer s/w, and the Tops s/w on their
suns. They all publish their own Zone names and Network numbers for the
same cable. This leads to major confusion.  

I noticed this when i received my Mac II with EtherPort II card. I
started to run Inter*Poll on the Mac II over Ethertalk, and every 5
seconds it was informing me that the zone name or network number had
changed. This was going on constantly as a Vax running Pacer PCLink was
changing the Zone/Network # of my workstation, and then our KFPS-I
running KIP would rechange the Zone name/Network Number. This goes on
constantly, leading me to wonder if the KFPS-II's are getting swamped
by ZIP requests and is spending most of its' time reacting to ZIT
updates, etc. and gets so swamped it crunches under the load (this does
not explain why the KFPS-I's work so well though - they should have the
same problem).

Has anyone seen a situation like this (i should know this one - not many
people are crazy enough to run unsubnetted class B nets.....)

thanks
tim wicinski
naval research labs