Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!inferno.mpx.com.au!nsw1.news.telstra.net!news.telstra.net!psgrain!news.uoregon.edu!cyclic.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!news.mathworks.com!uunet!in3.uu.net!129.115.10.31!naiad.utsa.edu!uthscsa.edu!nexp.crl.com!usenet From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Cheap ISDN solutions [was: What's the state of ISDN support?] Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 22:11:50 -0800 Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM Lines: 43 Message-ID: <333226A6.ABD322C@FreeBSD.org> References: <33303AE2.503C@cmr.no> <5gqhjt$k3t$1@gail.ripco.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: time.cdrom.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2-RELEASE i386) To: David Richards <dr@ripco.com> Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:37901 David Richards wrote: > You might want to consider going with an ISDN terminal server (Livingston > comes to mind) rather than an internal ISDN adapter. Faster, more > reliable, and doesn't load down your servers. > > Anything's better than switching to Linux. :-) FWIW, I have been running ISDN to my own home subnet for almost a year now, using standard PC equipment, and it works just great. What I've done is take 2 ADTRAN L1-Express TAs (the TA that Cisco recommends) and I've stuck each one on a plain old 16450 (not even any FIFOs!) serial port set to 115.2K/baud in a P5/90 class machine running FreeBSD [2.1.7]. This pair of machines, both of which were already doing other things and hence cheap to bring into service, implementing my ISDN gateway. Since I was also lucky enough to live close to work, I got a Centrex ISDN circuit which means I basically just leave it nailed up 24 hours a day and it costs me about $60/mo. Naturally, YMMV on the line charges, and the fact that my "ISP" is also my work gives me free packet forwarding, but hey - the boxes and the TAs were still a very cheap way of getting ISDN, no matter how you calculate it. :-) [Plus these boxes can do other things - hell, one of them is freefall.freebsd.org :-)] I get about 10.5K/sec transferring compressed FTP data; not quite the full-bore 12.5K/sec you could get over a truly sync-serial solution, but like I said - I didn't have to buy any extra equipment over the TAs (which now have also come down considerably in price from when I bought them) and for the price, it's more than reasonable performance. Oh yes, and those little 16450 based serial cards don't even twitch at 115.2K on a more or less constant basis (I beat the crap out of my line pushing release bits and other large chunks of data over it). A real tribute to Bruce Evans' serial I/O driver, I'd say. The ADTRAN TAs have also been a dream to use and configure - not a single problem with them. I would gladly recommend them to anyone. -- - Jordan Hubbard FreeBSD core team / Walnut Creek CDROM.