Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!op.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!207.17.190.11!news.diac.com!news
From: pimin@diac.com (Paul Newhouse)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.isdn,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: ISDN TA's supported for BSD Unix?
Date: 3 Feb 1997 00:23:58 GMT
Organization: Rockhead Enterprises
Lines: 57
Message-ID: <5d3b6u$s2v@doom>
References: <dkulp-ya023380000102971144510001@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
<5d0cg8$6es$1@gail.ripco.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: pimin.diac.com
X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.3
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.dcom.isdn:47927 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:34913
In article <dkulp-ya023380000102971144510001@darkstar.ucsc.edu>,
David Kulp <dkulp@cse.ucsc.edu> wrote:
>I'm investigating ISDN and am trying to determine the correct
>TA or router to buy for a PC running BSD Unix. Do the TA's require
>special drivers for the serial port which are win32 apps, or are
>there drivers for some TAs that run on BSD?
> (I couldn't find any mention of this in the BSD handbook.)
> I'm guessing that the easier option is to get an ISDN router and an
> ethernet card, but this is a significantly more expensive option.
>Anyone out there with experience here? I would guess that there
>are a few of you BSD folks running network services on ISDN.
I found that neither NetBSD or FreeBSD (the OS's I run with) support the
parallel port for this purpose (that has become an item on my "when I have
time" list). Also, if you connect an external "thing" to a serial port
you may be limited to 155200 (even though I've found cards that will do
230 or 460kbs) the device itself may be limited to 115??.
Ascend and Cisco have BSD/Unix friendly interfaces. Other vendors seemed
much to M$/Win95 centric for me. After talking with several friends who
have these devices I settled on a Pipeline 75 for home and a Pipeline 50
at the ISP. These boxes (and others I'm sure) have a good rep. Everyone
I talked to who uses these said, "with compression turned on", they get
better than 128 on non-compressible data (I don't understand this and
neither did they) and have gotten over 300 on "plain old data". I
haven't seen this yet (the boxes arrive later this week). Everyone who
had used both Cisco and Ascend told me they thought Ascend was easier (but
not to be confused with trivial) to configure. The manuals are much
larger than the boxes themselves. They connect via 10baseT or AUI ("thick
wire") to your local ethernet. I'm running 3 boxes with Net/Free BSD and
one with Win95 connected via an 8 port hub already so I've already spent
the ~$200 to set that up.
These boxes will cost you more than $600 each, so they hurt a bit more
up front. Don't assume that an ISP will let you install equipment at
their end, talk to them and make sure. The one I'm going with waived
all set-up fees, if I bought the POP end box (I maintain ownership).
If you aren't/can't do both ends you might want to look at the lower end
products Pipeline 25's and Cisco 7xx (I forget the
I felt the control of both ends of the connection was worth a bit more
up front since I can configure (eventually) the best (most optimal)
connection (which is why I went with the same vendor on each end).
That's my 2 cents worth, hope it helps.
Good luck,
Paul
--
If you don't have source code, it's firmware.
Never trust software with a version number ending in ".0".
-Dave Tweeten (Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation Facility)