tom@litle.litle.com (tom hampton) (07/03/90)
We have been banging away trying to get heterogeneous networking
over TCP/IP going at our shop. We keep running into little snags,
we find problems and trudge on. So, I ask:
1) Who out there is doing heterogeneous networking using
Unix and other TCP/IP implemenations?
2) Is anyone having success doing networking on 386's? If so, whose
TCP/IP package are you using on the 386?
3) Do you have any specific advice on how we get this going faster? For
example, should we have a LAN analyzer (which one?) should we stick
with a certain box for development (Sun?)
4) Does anyone recommend building a TCP/IP module for general purpose
use -- something that hides some of the complexity of the Berkely
socket interface?
5) Do people hire consultants to do this sort of work?? Do you
recommend anyone in particular?
Your responses to these questions represents a valued resource to us,
thanks for your time.
--
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Tom Hampton, Mgr. New Technology, Litle & Co. | POB A218, Hanover, NH 03755
603 643 1832
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Design is about figuring out what you won't be able to do.
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tom@litle.com tom@litle.uucp {backbone}!dartvax.dartmouth.edu!litle!tom
===============================================================================larry@focsys.uucp (Larry Williamson) (07/04/90)
In article <497@litle.litle.com> tom hampton writes: > > We have been banging away trying to get heterogeneous networking > over TCP/IP going at our shop. We keep running into little snags, > we find problems and trudge on. So, I ask: > > 1) Who out there is doing heterogeneous networking using > Unix and other TCP/IP implemenations? We are. > 2) Is anyone having success doing networking on 386's? If so, whose > TCP/IP package are you using on the 386? Great success. The 386/ix systems use Interactive's Host Based TCP/IP package with Western Digital EtherCard+ (aka WD8003). We are currently using 386/ix 2.0.2 and TCP/IP 1.2.0, (this tcp/ip upgrade fixes some pretty ugly bugs that were in the 1.1.x release). > 3) Do you have any specific advice on how we get this going faster? For > example, should we have a LAN analyzer (which one?) should we stick > with a certain box for development (Sun?) We've never needed a lan analyzer, though I've evaluated the package from ftp software and it looks good. I'm not sure what you mean by the second question (stick with one box). But if you are asking if the non 386 machines can be a mixed bag of goodies, then I would say mix and match all you like. We have quite a few different types of machines on our network, 386's, 68030's, MIPS RISC machines, DOS machines, they all work very nicely together. (There are even a few QNX machines, but they don't work so well). We also use CMC transervers for terminal servers. We are using the r commands (rlogin, rsh, rcp, etc), and telnet, and NFS and RFS (on the 386's only, of course). > 4) Does anyone recommend building a TCP/IP module for general purpose > use -- something that hides some of the complexity of the Berkely > socket interface? We've not found a need to do this. Especially because the applications we write must run on quite a few different machines. It is easier to just work with the socket library. > 5) Do people hire consultants to do this sort of work?? Do you > recommend anyone in particular? No. A few comments. Everything went together pretty well for us here. Mind you, we started out small (1 small 286 running Microport, 3 years ago) with 4 casual users. We have grown steadily and added hardware a piece at a time. The step to ethernet was pretty easy. No major headaches. I've not got all the pretty bells and whistles in place that I'd like, nntp is not up, intermachine email works, but needs some fleshing out are two examples. But the basic network is solid as a rock (well, how about, solid as clay). We get weird crashes, to be sure! But that only happens when there is a critical deadline at hand :-) -larry
davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) (07/07/90)
In article <497@litle.litle.com> tom@litle.litle.com (tom hampton) writes: | 1) Who out there is doing heterogeneous networking using | Unix and other TCP/IP implemenations? We do it at work. We have Sun[234], Apollo, Cray, Convex, Stardent, DG, HP, SCO {Xenix,UNIX,ODT}, Ultrix. All this shares an ethernet which also has packets for Chaosnet and DECnet as well as TCP/IP. There are printers, too, and a few Macs. This comes to about 2k ports. | | 2) Is anyone having success doing networking on 386's? If so, whose | TCP/IP package are you using on the 386? Other than having problems with the original TCP for Xenix/386, no problems. I've also run Excelan's package for Xenix both 286 and 386, and that runs nicely. I really like having uucp over TCP, since it allows news to run without diddling with NNTP (which I never got running on Xenix). | | 3) Do you have any specific advice on how we get this going faster? For | example, should we have a LAN analyzer (which one?) should we stick | with a certain box for development (Sun?) If you're having trouble you should just run a few devices on a "tiny net" to see what doesn't work. Turn off all the stuff which creates net noise, like whod and the date and time check. | | 4) Does anyone recommend building a TCP/IP module for general purpose | use -- something that hides some of the complexity of the Berkely | socket interface? But sockets hide the complexity of streams ;-) Seriously, no, not on your life. | | 5) Do people hire consultants to do this sort of work?? Do you | recommend anyone in particular? We did the main net with in-house people who do it for a living, but all the 386 stuff was put in by hackers, some of whom are not programmers at all, just bizarre physicists and mechanical engineers. Hell, it's so simple a manger could do it. Warning: we have been using virtually all SCO variants. We did have ISC up for a while until it bit us once too often on big disks, and we have one versions of V.4 beta in which works, and two more in the mail (one will only do a limited number of ethernet cards at the moment). -- bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen) sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me