Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!umd5!uflorida!gatech!udel!princeton!njin!aramis.rutgers.edu!topaz.rutgers.edu!ron From: ron@topaz.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans Subject: Re: Terminal servers over ethernet? Message-ID:Date: 28 Jun 88 15:38:39 GMT References: <320@ucrmath.UUCP> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 39 The UB server is an unmitigated piece of crap. We've been stuck with a number of these and we have had no luck getting any real level of support out of Ungerman/Bass. Their major problem is that the code is still buggy and the boxes just lock up from time to time. Also, there seems to be not much steam in their 286 or whatever processor they use and while the boxes run fine for one or two connections, three connections are miserable. There is still a bug with the way they handle telnet option negotiation and the UDP IEN-116 name server has a bug doing checksums. In addition the boxes will masquerade as other of your hosts due to an error in the ICMP code (they will occasionally claim in ARP messages to be other IP addresses than they really are). We're to the point of just heaving ours out the window. To run the UB server requires you buy one of their silly Network Management Stations and run a dedicated "Down Load Server." Fortunately they've recently moved this to SUN's rahter than burning IBM-PC's for the task. The software is very pricey compared to the cheap price for the box. On the other hand, the UB boxes are about the most programmable/configurable of any box on the market. We've looked at servers from CISCO and ANNEX. They are both about equivelent in their features. CISCO really excels in large (like 96 lines) applications in a single box. They are not as cost effective for 16 lines. They are planning to announce a new small product that will run the same software that will probably be pretty slick, but I only have rumors on the subject. We ran Bridge servers here for several years (actually some departments still do) and while they are not our first choice, they do work. My main observation on Bridge products in general is that they work as claimed, are really reliable, but they don't always get the protocols right. For example the terminal servers have some small problems in the options negotiation and they don't do ICMP at all. They also don't do Domain name server, but I here you can get that now, if you have a box with enough memory in it to run their new software. -Ron