Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!TAURUS.BITNET!LEONID From: LEONID@TAURUS.BITNET Newsgroups: comp.protocols.ibm Subject: Re: SUNLINK Users ?? Message-ID: <8805141443.AA11569@jade.berkeley.edu> Date: 14 May 88 14:35:14 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: leonid%taurus.bitnet@jade.berkeley.edu Organization: The Internet Lines: 81 > From: Peter Elford > Subject: SUNLINK Users ?? > > Has anyone got some experience with the SUNlink product that makes a SUN > 3/160 look like a local controller to an IBM/MVS host and hence provides a > TCP/IP gateway to the IBM host for other TCP/IP machines on the same netwrok > as the SUN ? I have some experiencing with the SunLink SNA-3270 product. This one emulates a 3274 controller with a synch SNA connection. There is another one that connects directly to the channel - it's called SunLink Local-3270, but I have never used it. > > I would be interested in: > 1) functionality - terminal emulation, file transfer ?? The software consists of a "3274" server - a UNIX daemon which controlls the lines, and accepts up to 32 DataSream-3270 peers. These peers are implemented with RPC/XDR. To each of these peers (LUs) one can connect a terminal emulation program (te3278) that works on the Sun console on any other termcap(5) supported terminal, with user-definable keys etc. There is also a local printer emulation (pe3278) which impelemnts the screen prints and send it to the Unix printer spool. File transfer is accoumplished via the same 3270 stream the same way PCs do it with various 3270 emulators. The te3270 has the hooks necesary to start a file transfer from an emulation screen, and on the IBM you need an additional peice of software provided by IBM. (SunLink installation guide mentiones the part numbers). You may already have those if you use PCs with file transfer via 3270. As to the "relay" feature of it, there are two things to mention: 1. a te3278 terminal emulation process that runs on ANY Sun on the network can connect to ANY sna3274 daemon, thus sharing the LUs is trivial. Moreover, the various 3274's are published via YP. 2. Any terminal that connects to a Sun (WorkStation or Server) via a TELNET or Rlogin, can use the terminal emulatorbut with file transfer is not that easy. > 2) speed The pefrormance of this software has the "feels" of any other 3270 emulation on an ascii terminal. The software overhead on the Sun CPU using a 9600 synch connection is neglectable. Therefore I presume that the Local-3270 product can acheive real good speed. (It needs a pecialized hardware for the channel connection though...) > 3) cost effectiveness as compared to other IBM<->TCP/IP options ? As costs are concerned, the SunLink solution is real cheap. For one SNA connection you can get a SUN-3/60S (3 Mip server) for ~7,500$ and the rest is only software 1k$-2k$ approx. But you cannot and must not compare this to a full TCP/IP membership on an IBM, see below. > 4) pros and cons The SunLink solution (among others, e.g. Bridge w/ SNA) is worth ONLY for logging in Sun and other TTY users to an IBM, it is not a full networking solution for you IBM system. For a typical commercial organization this might be good enougth, but when you need E-Mail and direct FTP access to IBM discs from any machine on the network, I'd much prefer to have full TCP/IP on an IBM, for all it costs. If I compare the SunLink solution to ther 3270 emulators for asynch terminals, and there are quite many of those in the market, the SunLink is most appropriate if you already have SUNs and need mainly the terminal emulation function, and cheaply. > > Peter Elford, > Computer Services Centre > Australian National University, > Canberra, AUSTRALIA. > > pte900@fac3.anu.oz > Leonid Rosenboim, CS & Math, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. [ The opinions are all my own, and I am not working for Sun or any of their representatives. ]