Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!husc6!yale!cmcl2!vx2!ittai From: ittai@vx2GBA.NYU.EDU (Ittai Hershman) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans Subject: Re: U-B Terminal servers flame Message-ID: <204@vx2GBA.NYU.EDU> Date: 13 Jul 88 23:42:00 GMT References: <320@ucrmath.UUCP><23841@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Organization: New York University Lines: 26 Like Ron, we too worked with the engineer who got his hands tied up. Fortunately, by the time we got our last "under the table" release, most of the problems had been resolved -- we are now running the original release plus about 10 patches. Given the change in heart at UB Corporate, I decided not to get involved in beta testing the second round... The only real problem remaining for us with the original release is that a) it only uses IEN116 name service, and b) you can only point to one name server, which means there is no redundency for name service. Also, the configuration process is half-assed -- there are three different databases with three different configuration programs, which don't interact well. It is virtually impossible to update certain types of information, without completely deleting and re-creating the box's configuration file. And to make matters worse, the configurations (which are downloaded) are keyed to the box's serial number -- which is hardwired -- so if a box dies and has to be replaced, you have to muck about with configurations. Alas, the engineer Ron and I dealt with only worked on the TCP innards and couldn't help with the configuration issues at all. We are using these boxes almost exclusively with broadband connections, where you really have to lock-in with a single vendor. For ethernet connections, if we had the need, I would probably buy cisco... -Ittai XYZZYGLORP