About a week ago I sent out a message asking about people's experience with
terminal servers.
The overwhelming favorite are products from Xylogics, but some others were
brought up as well.
The votes:
Xylogics 11 votes, all very positive
Xyplex 3 votes, 2 had reservations
Livingston 2 votes, all very positive
1 vote for Magma sbus cards, from somebody at Magma...
1 vote for the "Chase Iolan"
1 vote for Emulux
Comments about Xyplex were:
On the 1600 series, the serial ports can only go to 38.4kbps.
On the 1600 series, you can have hardware flow control or connection signaling,
but not both at the same time.
"We have had a xyplex server for 5 years. It has worked continuously with
no downtime during this period. The manuals are a bit obscure but xyplex gave
execellent tech support during the setup phase and we had no significant
problems getting the server in operation." (metcalf@positron.com)
"We've had some bad experiences with the Xyplex terminal servers, although
that was a few years ago. They seemed very weak on the TCP/IP support, and
very inflexible." (jcallaha@willamette.edu)
Comments about the Livingston products:
"Great products, well built, well thought out, flexible, good tech support,
etc. They even have a good security, authorization system for remote
users." (tmornini@parallaxinc.com)
" These servers were straightforward to install
and have been humming along for about three years now." (sdr@rdga3.att.com)
Comments about Xylogics products:
"I am pleased at the way they have worked out. We did a formal
evaluation of terminal servers before choosing these, and we chose them
for price and features. The management/setup features are particularly
strong. Also in their favour is the fact that they boot off a SUN,
macros come off a SUN, ... so you don't need floppy disks to boot them,
or to change every time something is updated." (moreilly@fsaia.qld.gov.au)
"We've had great success with the Xylogic's Annex products."
(jcallaha@willamette.edu)
"We use the xylogics annex 3 terminal server which has 64 ports. It runs
OK, and reliable. It has its own na (network admin) command to set different
parameters of different ports. It has built-in SLIP function. But I do not
like its manuals. And it is very hard to determine which port is which from
the cable(No Marks!). This is really a headache when you try to trace the
problem port!" (eleeb0p@menudo.uh.edu)
"Get a xylogics Annex terminal server - excellent devices/software."
(blymn@awadi.com.AU)
"Get the Annex3 from Xylogics. It's a great system. Excellent
management and security features. Flow control up to 57,600."
(jamesm@matrix.newpaltz.edu)
"I'm a huge fan of the xylogics annex. I have never had a single problem with
it. does slip/ppp/ara/...and what ever the IPX version is/active RIP/...
... they just work." (heas@maelstrom.Timeplex.COM)
"We have a Sun Network Terminal Server (which is really a re-packaged
Xylogics Annex 3) attached to 16 modems (on one side) and an LX (on the
other side).
Works great! The user interface is very configurable. It's easy to set
up menus." (victoj@kellas.sage.edu)
"We have a Xylogics Annex II, and it's a delight. Once set up, it mostly
just sits there and runs forever. Once in a while I have to reconfigure
a terminal, which is fairly simple, but the main box just hums along."
(murphy!acmcr!vr@uunet.uu.net)
I eventually decided to buy the Livingston for serveral reasons:
1) Cheapest per port
2) Free lifetime software upgrades
3) No adapters required
4) Serial port speed to 115kbps
As a side note, the distributer I talked to mentioned that since Xylogics just
came out with a new hardware release (the 4000 series), they were selling off a
LOT of old refurbished Annex 3's at very good prices. The prices he quoted for
the adapter cables were a LOT less than Xylogics quoted for similar parts. He
also mentioned that Xylogics wants them to push the new 4000 series
(of course!).
Many thanks to all who responeded: (this is in no particular order..)
rbouli01@eng.eds.com
blymn@awadi.com.AU (Brett Lymn)
james mularadelis <jamesm@matrix.newpaltz.edu>
Heas <heas@maelstrom.Timeplex.COM>
john@oncology.uthscsa.edu (John Justin Hough)
"Peter A. Starceski" <starcesk@noc.hfh.edu>
sdr@rdga3.att.com (S. D. Raffensberger 52882 (RD))
Jeff Victor <victoj@kellas.sage.edu>
klm@othello.macom.com (Kyle L. Martin)
Reto Lichtensteiger <rali@hri.com>
"Thomas J. Blauvelt" <blauvelt@aldus.NorthNet.org>
jmarble@cambric.com (Jeff Marble)
murphy!acmcr!vr@uunet.uu.net (Vicki Rosenzweig)
moreilly@fsaia.qld.gov.au (Mark J O'reilly)
John Callahan <jcallaha@willamette.edu>
metcalf@uucp (Taft Metcalf)
tmornini@parallaxinc.com (Tom Mornini)
Wang <eleeb0p@menudo.uh.edu>
lisa@magma.com (Lisa Barnes)
soles@pa.pdc.com (Steve Oles - KOP Sales)
Just and editorial note. I was totally shocked at the volume and quality of
the responses!! Long live the NET!!!
Dabe
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:10:19 CDT