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From: amanda@intercon.uu.net (Amanda Walker)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: UDPTalk as a backbone
Message-ID: <1437@intercon.UUCP>
Date: 6 Sep 89 00:47:57 GMT
References: <1989Sep3.063402.22872@caen.engin.umich.edu> <31297@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <1989Sep4.202733.6326@caen.engin.umich.edu> <1435@intercon.UUCP> <1989Sep5.193002.15583@caen.engin.umich.edu>
Sender: news@intercon.UUCP
Reply-To: amanda@intercon.uu.net (Amanda Walker)
Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation
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In article <1989Sep5.193002.15583@caen.engin.umich.edu>,
billkatt@caen.engin.umich.edu (billkatt) writes:
> Yes, K*Star is newer than KIP.  Maybe I mistated what I mean, but the FastPath
> was simply a hardware device to run KIP.  Sure, Kinetics supplied different
> software (EtherTalk), but that's not what people ran.  If you only consider
> what Kinetics sends and supports as being the use for their hardware, then
> you can't include atalkad as software which is made for it.  atalkad is part
> of KIP, which Kinetics doesn't supply or support, but that's what people run.
> -Steve

That's a fairer description, but I still think it's inaccurate.  A FastPath
is *not* a Seagate box.  It is almost functionally identical, and lots of
people who got into AppleTalk over Ethernet (notably universities) used them
as a hardware device that they could run KIP on (and that had the advantage
of coming preassembled :-)).

However, there are also many, many people who ran the ELAP gateway from
Kinetics (and later, the "combined gateway" and now K-Star).  Thinking of
"the purpose of a FastPath" as "what I and my friends use FastPaths for"
is just as limiting as only considering Kinetics' software.

--
Amanda Walker
InterCon Systems Corporation

amanda@intercon.uu.net    |    ...!uunet!intercon!amanda
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"Nihil est ab omni parte beatum"   --Horace
tr.: "Nothing is an unmixed blessing"