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From: Jim Dennis <jimd@mistery.mcafee.com>
Message-Id: <199605020043.RAA00204@mistery.mcafee.com>
Subject: Re: ISDN
To: lmcsato@lmc.ericsson.se (Samy Touati)
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 17:43:45 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: aam3@cornell.edu, questions@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <Pine.Sola.3.91.960501152852.11616A-100000@chicago> from "Samy Touati" at May 1, 96 03:33:14 pm
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> 
> On Wed, 1 May 1996, Abdullah Marafie wrote:
> 
> > I am intersted in FreeBSD but i was wondering if it supports ISDN.
> > I am looking for more information on that like the hardware and cards 
> > it supports ..etc.  
> >                                             Thank you in advance
> 
> Yes FreeBSD will run with an external TA.
> For example if you plug the bitsurfrPro into a fbsd box it will act as a 
> modem.
> For internal cards, I'm not familiar with them.
> 
> Samy


	I highly recommend an ISDN to ethernet bridge (such as the
	Livingston ISDN Office Router, the Ascend Pipeline 25 or Pipeline
	50, or the Cisco 700 series (formerly Combinet))

	The advantages are:  Multiple hosts can share the PPP connection,
	you don't lose any bandwidth (128K/s is too fast for standard
	PC serial hardware), you can use them with Sun, SGI, or other
	types of hardware (maybe you don't want to today -- but think
	of where you might be next year), and any TCP/IP over ethernet 
	should work with it.


	Web Pages for further info:

		Livingston:
			http://www.livingston.com

			(My personal favorite -- comes with their ComOS which as
			 and elegant packet filter language and support RADIUS and
			 some other cool features)

		Ascend:
			http://www.ascend.com

			(A bit spendier -- some models require you to pay extra
			for the IP routing software; and some require an external
			NT1.  I don't know about packet filltering options and 
			I've heard that they are a bear to configure -- they
			are the market leader and they offer Stac compression
			hardware to boost throughput -- when there's an 
			ascend at the other end)

		Cisco:
			http://www.cisco.com

			(I don't know how well they've integrated the Combinet
			 products into their line so I don't know if it has 
			 IP packet filtering options)


	Any of these will be priced between $1000 and $2000.

Jim Dennis,
System Administrator,
McAfee Associates