>From: Jaye Mathisen <mrcpu at internetcds.com> > >Why don't you want to give your users a PCi card? WE've been using it and >it works very well... Several reasons, none of which have anything to do with the card per se: 1. The basic hardware installation is completely beyond most users (in our experience). Reluctantly, they get their consultant in. The consultant also cannot do it. We end up going out and doing it, and the user is upset at their consult fees. This occurred repeatedly. 2. The install procedure is different for each version of Windows. 3. There is no Mac software. 4. If you want to use Frame Relay so the link is up all the time, you must assign a /30 to the user. Further, the Maxen cannot assign an address from a pool over FR. 5. If you use PPP, the connection drops when the client restarts. They either cannot understand how to make it automatically reconnect or they forget how to manually connect. Many of these issues are due to limitations in Windoze and generual user cluelessness, but they add up to a support nightmare. We've even had to reimburse one irate user for his (clueless) consultant's fees. We do have one customer that knows what they're doing running a card in an NT server. I wouldn't even do that again. Whenever the NT server is down, the link is down. Yet another alert in the NOC. The cards are fine, and I'd use one personally--if there was Mac software. But our experience shows that you need to control the link as far down the line as you can, or suffer. >On Fri, 18 Aug 2000, Dennis Reiter wrote: > > > Quoting Peter Lalor (plalor at infoasis.com): >> > The main issue has been lack of compatible bridges. Xpeed makes a PCI >> > card (which you can optionally source through Lucent), but our >> > experience tells us that you do not want to give your lusers a card. >> > Hopeless. Xpeed probably has Ethernet, USB, etc. bridges by now, but >> > I haven't tried them. http://www.xpeed.com/ >> >> Xpeed does indeed have Ethernet and USB. I played around with the >> USB models and they don't work too bad. >> > > Denny -- Peter Lalor Infoasis plalor at infoasis.com http://www.infoasis.com/ "Where's my burrito?" -- Homer ++ Ascend Users Mailing List ++ To unsubscribe: send unsubscribe to ascend-users-request at bungi.com To get FAQ'd: <http://www.nealis.net/ascend/faq>