Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!shelby!portia!Jessica!morgan From: morgan@Jessica.stanford.edu (RL "Bob" Morgan) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans Subject: Re: Ethernet Bridge Recommendation? Message-ID: <3735@portia.Stanford.EDU> Date: 18 Jul 89 16:59:56 GMT References: <2951@sharkey.cc.umich.edu> Sender: USENET News System Reply-To: morgan@Jessica.UUCP (RL "Bob" Morgan) Organization: Stanford University Lines: 41 > I have about $6000 (at most $8000) to bridge 3 standard ethernet > subnets, I have about $6000 (at most $8000) to bridge 3 standard > ethernet subnets, ... so far I've looked at bridges from Micom, > Raycom, Retix and DEC, are there any other vendors that I should try? There are some innaresting new products out there. A couple of companies make bridges based on the IBM-PC card form factor, including Network Application Technology, in Cupertino at 408-733-4530, and Alantec in Fremont at 415-770-1050. The NAT unit is a complete 2-port bridge on a board, so it just uses the PC chassis for power, while the Alantec uses the PC processor to handle the packets, so you can do slow and cheap with an 8088 or fast and expensive with a 386. I think they're both shipping product these days. Cabletron also has a new bridge product out, in the normal sort of package. All of these are in the same sort of price range as the low-end Retix, I believe. Features that are starting to be available in low-end bridges, besides the low price, are management (preferably IP-based, in our case), and doing the (or a) spanning-tree algorithm. It seems we may have to wait a bit for generally interoperable 802.2 spanning-tree implementations. > ... so far the best deal I can find is on 2 of Retix' low-end bridges > that are rated for 6000 'frames/second'... is that fast enough for > joining segments that have about 10 hosts each?? The obvious question is what kind of traffic will be going across the bridges? If it's just rlogin, then there's certainly no problem. If you're doing NFS from diskless Sun clients across a bridge, you might want to think twice, although we have successfully done that experimentally across Retix bridges here. > Security is something of an issue since there is clinical data on some > hosts and research data on others, so I would like some control over > access. My attitude is that depending on a bridge to provide security is like sawing wood with a hammer. Are your hosts not secure, or are you worried about people tapping your cable? I don't think any of the low end bridges provide user-manageable filters.