hotta@kddlab.kddlabs.JUNET (Hotta Takao) (05/30/88)
We are using several Macintosh in our office. Our Laboratory is building Appletalk network, but Appletalk has several limit: 1. Appletalk can connect only 32 devices. 2. Very slow speed (about 230 Kbps) 3. cable length is 1000 feet So Appletalk can't expand. Our network connect 30 devices now. Cable length is about 1000 feet. I hear some products for expanding Appletalk : Phone-net, Flash Talk and FastPath... If you know how to expand Appletalk, please inform me on it. Takao Hotta hottakddlab.kddlabs.junet@uunet.uu.net
dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke) (05/31/88)
In article <422@kddlab.kddlabs.JUNET> hotta@kddlab.UUCP (Hotta Takao) writes: >So Appletalk can't expand. Wrong. >Our network connect 30 devices now. Cable length is about 1000 feet. >I hear some products for expanding Appletalk : Phone-net, Flash Talk >and FastPath... Most of these are alternative Appletalk devices. Phone-Net is a different set of connector and wires, and hence allows you to increase the length of an Appletalk network to about 3000 feet. Flash Talk uses standard AppleTalk connectors, but it is for the IBM PC and clones. It consists of any appletalk connector and the FlashTalk card for the IBM PC. FlashTalk is slightly smart, when talking to another FlashTalk device it goes at aprox. 750Kbps, when talking to a standard AppleTalk device it slows down to the normal 230Kbps. FastPath is a Ethernet (TCP/IP????) gateway, it CONVERTS appletalk traffic to an Ethernet protocol so that you can communicate with devices that don't talk Appletalk. >If you know how to expand Appletalk, please inform me on it. You can expand Appletalk, you need to buy an AppleTalk Bridge. AppleTalk supports the concept of a Zone. Zones are for when you've expanded one local network to the maximum size, at that point you should break the network into Zones, this is accomplished semi-automatically when you connect up to a bridge. Chooser will have a new box that allows the user to select what Zone they what to use. Most all of your software should work with Zones since the support for the routing of inter-net packets is supported at a very low level in the protocol. That means anything using a high level protocol won't know the difference. You can have as many Zones as necessary. I've even heard of one school with 15 laserWriters all in their own Zone, when people what to use a LaserWriter they tell chooser to look in the LaserWriter Zone. Each Zone is a separate AppleTalk network with the 32node/1000 foot limit. In addition you can buy a Tops Repeater which allows you to extend the maximum length of any AppleTalk network beyond 1000 feet, I don't know if it would also work for Phone net, expanding that beyond 3000 feet, it would be nice if it did. There is also EtherTalk, but this requires a board for each computer on the network. This is standard EtherTalk running AppleTalk protocols. So any limits would be the EtherTalk limits rather than the AppleTalk protocol. Although with EtherTalk you still should be using AppleTalk zones when you grow above 50 nodes. Dupont Corp. makes a Fiber Optic appletalk product. Don't know any of the specs or cost. But Fiber Optic offers fantastic distance and speed potential. You might want to look into it. Hope this helps. -- David M. O'Rourke Disclaimer: I don't represent the school. All opinions are mine!
matthews@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Jim Matthews) (06/01/88)
In article <3001@polyslo.UUCP> dorourke@polyslo.UUCP (David O'Rourke) writes: > You can have as many Zones as necessary. I've even heard of one school >with 15 laserWriters all in their own Zone, when people what to use a >LaserWriter they tell chooser to look in the LaserWriter Zone. > Each Zone is a separate AppleTalk network with the 32node/1000 foot limit. > Actually, each zone is a collection of Appletalk networks, not necessarily adjacent ones. Here at Dartmouth we have somewhere around a hundred AT networks, but only 70 or so zones. It takes the Chooser a while to start up. Jim Matthews Software Development Jim.Matthews@dartmouth.edu