From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu May 23 23:17:45 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id XAA00467 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 23 May 1996 23:17:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from parkplace.cet.co.jp (parkplace.cet.co.jp [202.32.64.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id XAA00458 for ; Thu, 23 May 1996 23:17:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (michaelh@localhost) by parkplace.cet.co.jp (8.7.5/CET-v2.1) with SMTP id PAA06078 for ; Fri, 24 May 1996 15:17:37 +0900 (JST) Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 15:17:37 +0900 (JST) From: Michael Hancock To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.com Subject: Re: SDL cards In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 23 May 1996, Karl Denninger, MCSNet wrote: > > "Expensive" is a relative question, as always. They do have the > > advantage of actually mostly working, so you'll save a lot of time > > trying to get ISDN D channel signaling software to work. And then > > tweaked to support the different phone switches, NI-1 vs. AT&T Custom, > > different switch software "features", etc. [..] > > You should see the Pipeline 130 - T1 with built-in CSU/DSU and ISDN > > BRI with NT1 in the same sized box. Making it bigger than necessary > > only makes it cost more. I've got a P50 LS56 on a 56K Frame Relay > > circuit at home, and it works great. > > Yeah, ain't that a neat box? An ISPs dream - T1 access with integrated ISDN > dial backup (!) on one or two "B" channels. I love those damn things; now > if I could just get some shipped! :-) > > Oh, they're cheap too (~$2k). CISCO, watch out in the access router > marketplace; you have some serious competition out there. Cisco wasn't exactly the leader in this area. They are playing catching up to the Livingston's and the Ascends. > > Disclaimer: at my day job, I work at UUNET Technologies, and we have > > about 500 Ascend MAX 4000 boxes deployed in the field on about 1000 > > ISDN PRI's. Having the product work is a big feature. > > Yep. I run MCSNet, and we switched about a month ago from traditional > modems to Maxen as well. We also find that they work quite well. Still > some software quirks, but I'd never go back to the old way. > > Being able to get 500+ lines in one 84" cabinet is a big plus :-) Granted. Ascends are very very nice. But there is no hack value. An ISDN-only solution using a P6 box with 3 busmastering SDLComm RISCom/Pri cards handling 69 incoming ISDN connections with STAC compression would be very cool. Sorry, maybe its just me, but I am enamored with doing things on PCs running Unix. It's getting better all the time too; the PCI bus is starting to mature, there's incredible work being done on the FreeBSD VM, and we have BSD TCP/IP. -mh