experience with Bridge Ethertips anyone?

[Stephen M. Carter]

In article <813 at adobe.UUCP> shore at adobe.UUCP (Andrew Shore) writes:
>Anyone have any experience with CS/100 Communications
>Servers (ethertips) from Bridge Communications Inc.?
>
>We are thinking of getting them and have a few questions.  Our 
>environment is 4.2bsd VAXen and SUNs and a few other odd-balls
>on a 3Com Ethernet.  Everything we want to talk to with the
>Bridge box speaks TCP/IP (telnet).
>
>Any comments on reliability, service, ease of use, horror stories,
>etc., would be appreciated.

	Rutgers has been using them for quite some time now.  Before they
had TCP support, we used them running XNS like a switch arrangement.  I
would now consider the TCP code somewhat solid (ie most of the bugs out).  
Some nice new enhancements are expected in the next release.

> We have particular questions about: 
> * terminal type & termcap establishment 
Looks like any telnet connection.  You may change a number of parameters
for oddball terminals and for local command modes.
> * flow control (disabling it for usewith Gosling Emacs) 
You can have either hardware flow control or XON/XOFF.  You can select
your XON/XOFF characters so they need not be ^S-^Q.  You can disable both
if you prefer.
> * hanging other peripherals (e.g., Apple LaserWriters) 
> off of the box and establishing a connection to them 
Yes, we hang Talaris printers from them.  Although our Unix implementation is
not completed yet, we have some spooling from a dec-20 with little problems.

Overall, it is a solid product.  Support (both hardware and software) is also
good.  There are also some rather nifty features that you can use to 
connect machines that don't have TCP support (via RS232).   You may call me
if you would like more information on how they are used at Rutgers.  

-SCarter
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arpa:   SCARTER at RUTGERS or SCARTER at RED.RUTGERS.EDU
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