dd (01/31/83)
So far, I have received two U-B references, and three requests for copies of the information. Due to this level of interest, I will post the (slightly editted) responses to net.lan. Please keep responses coming! Thanks. Don Doerner, ucbvax!lbl-csam!lanl-a!unm-ivax!dd --------------------------Bell Labs--------------------------------------------- U-B system is very good. I am impressed about the simplicity of the NIU. We have 6 NIU's which are used to connect all our terminals, printers and DEC equipments to a LAN. We found an error on a board or on a port about once in three weeks. We also have parallel board on the NIU for DMA transfer from host-host. Sure it's a good system, go for it. --------------------------Boeing------------------------------------------------ We are just installing some broadband U-B gear here at Boeing. The network will be supporting terminal traffic as well as CPU-CPU traffic (VAX/VMS and SEL's). Don't really have much experience to tell you yet, except for some early impressions. Like you, we thought their design looked rather good on paper. So far, on a scale of 1 to 10, they rate about a 5 for their system. The one big sore point for me is the lack of support from U-B once they have sold you their gear. They are in California and we are in Washington, and they never seem to be there when we call and they aren't too good about returning our calls. Even when we get a hold of somebody, it's hard to debug problems over the phone, especially hardware problems. U-B expects you to be able to diagnose and fix all their hardware problems. We are trying to implement file transfer between the CPU's and are having all sorts of problems with the 32-bit board hardware (lack of understanding, weird behavior, etc). To add insult to injury, they just changed their datagram software TOTALLY, so that all our interface software has to change. Their datagram went from a 18-byte header to a 32-byte header and most of the fields got moved and/or changed! Anyway, U-B seems to be going through a traumatic period with changes in software and hardware rather frequently (probably to fix bugs). So you should be aware that if you buy from them, you'll be a sort of beta test site. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------