Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Path: utzoo!utgpu!trigraph!john
From: john@trigraph.uucp (John Chew)
Subject: Re: Shiva NetSerial Review
Message-ID: <1989Dec19.180027.134@trigraph.uucp>
Sender: "John J. Chew" <john@trigraph.UUCP>
Reply-To: "John J. Chew" <poslfit@gpu.UTCS.UToronto.CA>
Organization: Trigraph Inc., Toronto, Canada
References: <1005@maytag.waterloo.edu> <3074@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> <1861@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 89 18:00:27 GMT

In <1861@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> klong@wilkins.bcm.tmc.edu (Kevin Long) writes:
>People can call up from home and print small files to printers, etc, with
>no problem.  But if we equip the home machine with TOPS and try to mount
>a volume at the office or use ncsa telnet to pull a file off of one of
>our unix hosts gatewayed through the office network's fastpath, the 
>connection is inevitably dropped, sometimes after 5 minutes, sometimes 
>after 10. 
...
>	Kevin Long
>	Baylor College of Medicine
>	klong@bcm.tmc.edu

I knew there had to be someone else out on the net with the same problem.

We have tried several times to get a similar system working.  We run
6.0.3 instead of 6.0.4, have used T-2500's exclusively, and are using
TeleBridges instead of NetSerials, but we kept running into the same
problem.

Shiva tech support acknowledges that several users have reported similar
problems, but have never been able to duplicate the problem in-house
due to their lack of appropriate hardware (a FastPath box).  

The problem does not occur if nothing is running across the connection,
but if a Telnet is running, the connection dies after a variable amount
of time (usually several minutes).  I noticed that if you can catch
your local TeleBridge just after it goes catatonic but before it dies
completely, sending it any sort of ZIP request wakes it up.  Our local
workaround therefore was a DA that users could leave running that would
do a GetZoneList once a minute.

John
-- 
john j. chew, iii   		  phone: +1 416 425 3818     AppleLink: CDA0329
trigraph, inc., toronto, canada   {uunet!utai!utcsri,utgpu,utzoo}!trigraph!john
dept. of math., u. of toronto     poslfit@{utorgpu.bitnet,gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca}