Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!yale!cmcl2!phri!roy
From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Need configuration info for various DEC ethernet widgets
Message-ID: <3607@phri.UUCP>
Date: 19 Nov 88 20:40:35 GMT
Organization: Public Health Research Institute, NYC, NY
Lines: 29


	I've recently been asked to help somebody get hooked up to our
ethernet.  This guy is a couple of floors down from our ethernet trunk cable
and wants to put a number of things on the net so just running xciever drops
to each of his machines is no good.  Also, as this guy doesn't seem to know
anything about computers, programming, or networks, I'd like to have some
kind of isolation between his gear and mine.  I can see him unterminating a
cable and bringing down the whole net without realizing it.

	Anyway, he's got a couple of boxes with regular DB-15 sockets (uVAX,
DecServer-200) and a number of PC-type boxes with thin connectors.  He's also
got a DESPR and a DESTA.  So far, the plan seems to be to run a xceiver drop
from my thick backbone cable to his DESPR and then thin ethernet from there,
with his uVAX and DecServer connected via DESTAs.

	The question is, just what *is* a DESPR?  The Dec-Direct catalog I
have says little of value about the various widgets they make other than to
say that the DESPR is a repeater.  What exactly does that mean?  If he shorts
out his thin cable, will that do anything bad to my net?  Do I have to count
the effective length of his thin segments and the number of taps he has
against the maximum limits of my cable?  What about the rule that says you
can't have more than two repeaters between any pair of taps on the network?
Does his DESPR count as a repeater in this sense?  What about my DELNI and
TCL multiport xceiver boxes, do they count as repeaters?
-- 
Roy Smith, System Administrator
Public Health Research Institute
{allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net
"The connector is the network"