Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!dinosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu!verber From: verber@dinosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Mark A. Verber) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk Subject: Re: Mac II as bridge to EtherNEt Message-ID: <31901@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: 18 Jan 89 23:15:38 GMT References: Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: Mark A. Verber Organization: Ohio State University, Computer Science Department Lines: 33 Yes, a MacII with a LocalTalk and an EtherTalk connectikon can be used as a gateway with the proper software. Apple has such routers internally, someday we might even see them :-). In the mean time Infosphere sells a product call Liaison which will do the job for you. It permits you to configure your Mac as a gateway between an EtherTalk device, and your two serial lines (running LocalTalk or Async-AppleTalk). This would permit a machine to be configured as a gateway between say: an EtherTalk backbone, a LocalTalk branch, and have room for one dialup connection. Liaison seems like a pretty solid product. The user interface is good/very Maclike. It works well, but the throughput seems pretty slow. I haven't benchmarked it yet, but it seems slower than a Fastpasth-3. When you buy Liaison you are only to use one copy as a full bridge, but you can make any number copies of the the half-bridge code whcih permits easy distrubution for dialup users. One other warning is that Liaison and Kinetics Boxs hate each other. Your world will die if you are running Kboxs and Liaison. You could contact Infosphere Inc. for additional info: Infosphere Inc. 4730 SW Macadam Ave Portland Or 97201 503-226-3620 I believe Liaison is around $160. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark A. Verber Computer Science Department verber@cis.ohio-state.edu Ohio State University ..!osu-cis!verber 2036 Neil Avenue Mall 614-292-7344 Columbus, OH 43210-1277