it1@Isis.MsState.Edu (Tim Tsai) (04/10/91)
Hi.. We are interested in connecting a small TOPS network (See Group 2 below) to our campus TCP/IP backbone. What are some of the cost and performance effective solutions? We're primarily interested in allowing telnet/ftp from the machines on the TOPS network (mainly to a Sun 4), and perhaps disk sharing with a number of MS-Dos machines (ethernet, see Group 1) on the backbone. Any help/info regarding this subject would be greatly appreciated.. Current hardware/software setup follow: Group 1) About 10 MS-DOS machines connected to our backbone via a two port repeater. All of these machines use ethernet boards and NCSA Telnet. They aren't locally networked but a couple occassionally act as Novell workstations (using IPXP on top of packet drivers and Net3.COM). Group 2) A small TOPS network consisting of three to five MS-DOS machines, an Apple Laserwriter, and a Macintosh Plus. The MS-DOS machines have a mixture of Ethernet (not used yet) and some other TOPS compatible network boards. Some of the software require TOPS, so we would like to change as little as possible on this network at the software end. We're willing to switch to ethernet boards on these machines. The relevant machines are no more than 100 feet (30 meters) away from each other and the repeater. Thanks in advance for any help... Tim. --