DOS & UNIX ethernet board wish list (was Re: TCP/IP over St

[Lance C Norskog]

> Dr. Scump at Informix writes:
> This brings to mind a question.  Does anybody know of an ethernet
> board which will operate for *all* the following uses:
>     a) under UNIX Sys V/386 Rel 3.2.2 on a 6386:
>        *  uucp   
>        *  tcp/ip 
>        *  NFS or RFS
>        *  etc.
> 
>     b) under MS-DOS 3.30 or 4.01, also on a 6386:
>        *  PC-NFS   (or, FTP Software's PC/TCP will do in a pinch)
>        *  Novell NetWare  (I can live without this, but it'd be nice)

Unix V.3 uses a device interface spec called (variously) LLI or DLI.
This specifies a type of UNIX Streams driver which controls an Ethernet
card.  All four Streams TCP/IP brands (Streamlined, Wollongong, Lachman,
Interactive) use this standard, with proprietary extensions for error 
reporting.  Western Digital, Intel and Tiara Systems have written Streams 
LLI/DLI drivers for their boards and give them out under non-disclosure.
I don't know if the Intel board (PC586) is supported under DOS, but the
the other two (WD 8013 and Tiara LanE-16) are for all three DOS packages 
mentioned.  All three boards have 16-bit bus interfaces and 16-64k of 
buffer RAM; all have worked well here at Streamlined.  (WD, Irvine, CA;
Tiara, Mt. View, CA; Intel, Hillsborough, 503-696-8080).

The above TCP vendors also generally have a miscellany of drivers for old
8-bit Ethernet cards like the 3com's, UB, Micom dumb cards, etc.  We don't
recommend any of these cards; we get a 150-200% performance improvement with
16-bit Ethernet cards.  (In particular, 3com 501's should be buried with
a soldering iron through the heart.)

Other news: for $3500 you can get FDDI cards with UNIX Streams and DOS Novell 
drivers (Speed International, La Habra, CA).  Also, Thomas-Conrad (Austin) has 
announced a proprietary 100-mbit fiber protocol whose boards cost ~$1000 and 
are totally compatible with existing Arcnet drivers.  If you wondered what poin
t
there was to an RFC for running IP over Arcnet (I certainly did), now you know.

Lance Norskog
Sales Engineer
Streamlined Networks
415-659-1450