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