Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 17:46:23 -0500 From: Chris Shenton <chris@absinthe.i3inc.com> To: sysop@mixcom.com Cc: rob@xs1.simplex.nl, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: term server Message-ID: <199703272246.RAA00500@absinthe.i3inc.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 27 Mar 1997 08:56:03 -0600" References: <3.0.32.19970327085602.00ba6758@mixcom.com>
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I installed a PM2 (my first) at an ISP, and an Ascend Max 4004 (also my first) at NASA/HQ (my day job). If I were to start an ISP tomorrow, I'd buy a PM*3* in a heartbeat, even though I haven't played with one yet. On the down-side, the PM2 docs were painful: discussion of PMconsole setup and admin, but no ref for command line config; they've come out with new docs, so hopefully this has been remedied. But the machine (PM2) seems sound, the firmware robust, and the price per port -- especially for the PM3 -- quite good. The Max is obviously a more complex beast than the PM*2*, with PRIs and such. What gets me is the high cost and the almost *daily* firmware "incremental" releases, "patch" releases, and actual "release" releases. I am very disappointed with their SW engineering and quality control. Ours was rebooting every 8 hours until a recently firmware release fixed the bug. A bug in their RADIUS daemon prevented us from doing password expiration *and* idle timeout for many months until a recent release of that. It's real hard to keep track of the patches/incrementals when they come out so often -- and frequently introduce more insidious problems. Livingston SW releases seem much more controlled and careful. I like that in a production environment. Both have excellent on-line techies: Megazone for Livingston, and Kevin Smith for Ascend. Real heroes when you need 'em. But bang per buck and stability-wise, I'd go PM3.
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