[HECnet] FDDI advice

[Paul_Koning at Dell.com]

On Oct 10, 2013, at 8:44 AM, Brian Hechinger <wonko at 4amlunch.net> wrote:

On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 02:36:04PM +0200, Peter Lothberg wrote:
...
For example cisco/cabletron/crecendo had ethnernet switches with a
FDDI uplink, that you could use.

DEC made one as well, it was that large modular thingie. I used to have
one. Never got it powered on as it was enormous.

DEC made at least three.

The original one is the DECbridge 500, a 3U rack mounted device, 3 or 4 cards, 3 Ethernets (10 Mb/s) to FDDI.   See the DTJ issue I mentioned in my previous note.

The other two: the DECbridge 900, which plugged into the 900 series modular enclosure.   It's about the side of a 400 page hardcover book, FDDI to 6 Ethernet ports, 60,000 packets per second using a MC68040 at 25 MHz.   I'm still proud of that.   (I wrote the "fast path" packet forwarding firmware.)

Then there is the Gigaswitch, a large modular chassis with lots of line cards, some FDDI, some Ethernet, possibly some with other stuff I don't remember.

	paul