sysmark@physics.utoronto.ca (Mark Bartelt) (03/29/91)
One of the people in our group has a pair of 4D20s, one in his office and one at home (nice home computer, eh?). He's getting rather tired of lugging things back and forth via cartridge tape, so we're looking for alternatives. One can obtain a point-to-point leased line from TPC for a reasonable cost (well, how reasonable depends on the type of line), but we need to find out what sort of PI hardware/software support we can get. What we'd like to do is run the line at 56kb (or possibly 19.2 if the cost of the 56kb line is too prohibitive), using some type of plug-in synchronous (or async?) serial board in the SGI boxes. Unfortunately, our salesguy says that SGI doesn't provide anything along these lines. So it looks as if we'll need to look at third-party vendors. Does anybody have a recommendation (or non-recommendation, for that matter) for who we should be talking to? We'd clearly want someone who not only sells the board, but also provides a (working) device driver that we could configure into the kernel. What about modems? Anybody have any favourites? (I think that if you get a 56kb line from Bell Canada, cost of the modems is bundled in, so this question may be irrelevant.) Once the hardware and driver are in place, how about network support? I presume that what we'd want to do is use PPP (or maybe SLIP?) to run the point-to-point connection, and run gated in the office-end PI, which is also connected to our ethernet. Would all this be both necessary and sufficient to provide all the capabilities we'd want (e.g. telnet/ftp, plus NFS mounts (yeah, we *know* it'd be slow!))? Theories about what might/mightn't work are welcomed, but what we'd really like is to hear from someone who's actually done this. As usual, thanks in advance. Mark Bartelt 416/978-5619 Canadian Institute for mark@cita.toronto.edu Theoretical Astrophysics mark@cita.utoronto.ca
vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver) (03/29/91)
In article <1991Mar28.195640.8677@helios.physics.utoronto.ca>, sysmark@physics.utoronto.ca (Mark Bartelt) writes: > > One can obtain a point-to-point leased line from TPC for a reasonable > cost (well, how reasonable depends on the type of line), but we need > to find out what sort of PI hardware/software support we can get. > ... There are a bunch of people who work for Silicon Graphics with PI's or networks of PI's in locations around the world, but connected to the corporate network. It can be done. One popular method is the SGI SLIP product and your favorite 19.2 or 9.6 dial up modem. People here are using that with both PI's and X-terminals. They seem to prefer v.32 to PEP for X. People here have used NFS over SLIP, but agree it's slow. The best bet is probably among: (1) a dedicated line and your favorite IP router (e.g. Cisco, Proteon, or Wellfleet), CSU/DSI, and a private line. This would cost >$10K just for hardware. (2) SLIP and dial up async modems. This can be done for <$2000. (3) SLIP, private line, sync modems, and sync-async converters. This is intermediate in cost. It was how sgi.com was connected to the Internet for a year or two. Vernon Schryver, vjs@sgi.com