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- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!hp-cv!ogicse!cvedc!mcspdx!cah
- From: cah@pdx.csd.mot.com (Chris Huey)
- Newsgroups: comp.dcom.sys.cisco
- Subject: Re: Netblazer vs CS-500, bang vs buck?
- Message-ID: <1409@pdxvme.pdx.csd.mot.com>
- Date: 19 Nov 92 18:14:50 GMT
- Article-I.D.: pdxvme.1409
- References: <46018@ogicse.ogi.edu>
- Organization: Motorola, Beaverton, OR
- Lines: 46
- X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
-
- Aaron Nabil (nabil@ogicse.ogi.edu) wrote:
- :
- : Since my inquiry re: CS-500 vs ASM perormance has simply set the newsgroup
- : abuzz with followups, lemme try something else.
- :
- : My company needs to pick a platform for async access to our network. The
- : choices are the Netblazer (cheap) vs the Cisco families (nice). We need
- : to make the right choice now, since we want to commit to a platform that
- : we can be happy with over the next n years. We're probably looking at
- : about 160 ports over the next 2 years.
- :
- [ ... ]
- :
- : Can anyone who has, or had, both give me some feedback? I think it's
- : noteworthy that Alternet is choosing Netblazers...
- :
-
- We evaluated both of the above. Cisco may not want to hear this but...
-
- The NetBlazer came up and ran with no problems. We used it as a terminal
- server running both SLIP and PPP. We have a special need, however: we
- would like the NetBlazer to ignore the IP address coming in from the
- Async port and use the IP address assigned to the port (an IP alias) for
- all packets going out to the Ethernet interface. Telebit took our request
- and we've heard nada from them.
-
- Cisco came along and said "Sure. We do that!". So we tried out the 500-CS.
- We had the device in house for about 3 weeks before we could get any use out
- of it. Configuration is about 1-2 orders of magnitude more complicated but
- once understood, is not too tough. The IP alias feature did NOT work. Cisco
- said "Sorry" but we're still stuck. Not only that but if you want to use
- PPP, you must configure for different sub-nets (except for Async port 1 - go
- figure.) That's supposed to be fixed in release 9.2 (next year, sometime?).
- An async interface can only be SLIP or PPP encapsulation - to change it you
- must reconfigure the interface - which requires ENABLE mode (9.2 is supposed
- to allow you to change the encapsulation on the exec command line).
-
- This is not intended to be a slam on Cisco - I think they have a very complete
- line of communications devices. I just feel that the 500-CS is still an
- immature product.
-
- --
-
- Chris Huey Motorola Inc., Computer Systems Division
- cah@pdx.csd.mot.com Voice: (503) 520-5215
- "In the beginning was the word, 2 bytes long, aligned on an even boundary."
-