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Date:      Thu, 23 May 1996 13:23:57 -0400
From:      "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie@TransSys.COM>
To:        Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
Cc:        jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard), hasty@rah.star-gate.com, yves@CC.McGill.CA, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.com
Subject:   Re: SDL cards 
Message-ID:  <199605231723.NAA01516@whizzo.transsys.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 23 May 1996 23:29:12 %2B0930." <199605231359.XAA08996@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> 
References:  <199605231359.XAA08996@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> 

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> Jordan K. Hubbard stands accused of saying:
> > 
> > > Let me know if I can be of any assistance , I am really, really tired
> > > of my ISPs Ascend 400 . It tends to buckle under the weight of 
> > > FreeBSD :(
> > 
> > I find this quite surprising - you used to LOVE your Ascend, Amancio -
> > is that love affair over so quickly? :-)
> 
> The 400 is the multiport server.  They're horrifically expensive, and
> apparently seriously underpowered.  

The thing which may be the root of the problem is if you're expecting
the box to do STAC compression on the ISDN B channels.  You'll quickly
run out of CPU on those boxes.  The Ascend MAX 4000 has hardware
compression support, so it's much less of an issue.

"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.

> A friend of mine bought a P50 recently; it's the most amazingly dinky
> little unit - I was expexting something much larger.

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.

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.

Louis Mamakos




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