Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!oakhill!tomj
From: tomj@oakhill.UUCP (Tom Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: AppleTalk Zones in Chooser
Message-ID: <3174@oakhill.UUCP>
Date: 10 Apr 90 12:46:23 GMT
References: <28399@ubvax.UB.Com> <431@mck-csc.UUCP>
Reply-To: tomj@oakhill.UUCP (Tom Johnson)
Organization: Motorola Inc., Austin, Texas
Lines: 32

In article <431@mck-csc.UUCP> pete@mck-csc.UUCP (Peter Gaston) writes:
>We're designing a large network, 44 offices, 3500 users, Appletalk as
>the LAN, some kind of backbone (Decnet, Sun, or bridged Novell as of now).
>
>When I pop up my chooser in this environment, 
>  ---> How many zones will I see? <---
>
>Pete Gaston
>Cambridge Systems Center

The simple answer is:  "How many do you **want** to see?  I depends on how
many gateways you will have from Appletalk onto your backbone.  You mention 
44 offices and 3500 users.  Does this mean 3500 MACS?  If so, then a little
division gets us an average of about 80 users/office.  This is above the
**practical** limit for appletalk.  (The **physical** limit is 128 users
and 128 "system" devices - printers, servers, etc).  Practically speaking,
you should try to keep the number of users/zone down to somewhere on the
order of 32.  While this implies that you will have something like 100 zones,
it does NOT necessarily mean you must have 100 zone names. If you
give two gateways (with different IP numbers) the same NAME, this name will
only show up once.  We do this here (50 zones names, about 100 zones, and
about 3000 machines).  By using appropriately descriptive zone names, it
is not difficult to manage a large number of zones in the Chooser.
Additionally, you might consider putting any Appleshare servers directly on
the backbone.  This way, users from the various zones only have to learn
a single zone name to find the server machines.

Hope this helps.

Tom Johnson	(tomj@oakhill.UUCP)

Disclaimer:  I don't speak for Motorola, and Motorola don't speak for me!