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From: pdg@chinet.chi.il.us (Paul Guthrie)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Problems with using kermit over starlan.
Message-ID: <1990Sep05.185037.24422@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 5 Sep 90 18:50:37 GMT
Sender: pdg@chinet.chi.il.us (Paul Guthrie)
Organization: The League of Crafty Hackers
Lines: 32

We're having a problem with using kermit across starlan.  For those
who don't know, MS-Kermit has an option to use the NetBIOS serial
redirection to log into another machine over the network.

First the vitals: MS Kermit 3.0 on 286 and 386 machines, connecting
to 386s and 3B2 Model 1080s running StarGROUP 3.2.  The network
is a StarLAN 10.  

The problem is that once more than 6 or 7 people log into the 3B2,
the throughput of the packets goes down dramatically.  Eventually
the typists overflow their keyboard buffers and lose characters.  We
have checked all of the obvious things (4 byte streams buffers, etc),
but what seems to be going on is that the overhead of processing
each OSI packet is so great the the 3B2 can't keep up.  

Although Kermit 3.0 seems better than the previous versions (2.2 and
2.3), I think what may help is a terminal emulator that will send
multiple characters in one packet, if the typing is fast, so the
actual number of packets does not increase (much) with changes of
typing styles.  

So....... can anyone recommend a better terminal emulator that
supports StarLAN (or NetBIOS connections in general), or can anyone
pass along some pointers of what to tune on the 3B2 to increase
performance in this area?

I would also be interested in hearing of peoples experiences with
using kermit or multiple cu connections over StarLAN, and how many
simultaneous connections you have used, and to what sort of host.
-- 
Paul Guthrie
chinet!nsacray!paul or pdg@balr.com or attmail!balr!pdg