UUNet 10Plus

Thu Jul 10 19:03:37 UTC 1997

     Joe,

     There seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding how our product works 
     and what it's capabilities are.  I would be happy to share insight 
     into how MFS uses our equipment and share with you information on 
     performance and ATM traffic shaping capabilities.  

     Obviously, I'm also interested in how you tested and measured the 
     throughput numbers you received.  The numbers you are reporting don't 
     add up.  I'd like to help you get to the bottom of the issue.

     Thanks,

     Rocky Rosas
     Director, Technical Services
     NetEdge Systems, Inc.
     rosas at netedge.com

     Support: 800 NET-ATM1
     support at netedge.com

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: UUNet 10Plus
Author:  Joe  Shaw <jshaw at insync.net> at internet_mail
Date:    7/10/97 11:46 AM

On Wed, 9 Jul 1997, Peter Kline wrote:

> Men,
> 
> CPE -- 10baseT/FDDI ---|netedge|--- DS3 ---|netedge|--- 10baseT/FDDI -- switch
> 
> In otherwords, the NetEdges act as bridges, which have to be used in a pair 
> in order to turn the ethernet or FDDI connection into ATM over the DS3 and 
> back.  The NetEdges are programmable, and I'm sure that bandwidth is one of 
> the things that's configurable.  

That's the connection we have alright, but MFS/UUNet says they cannot 
limit the amount of bandwidth on it, and that if they gave us a 100Mbps 
handoff off the NetEdge box, then we'd get 100Mbps off it and there was 
nothing they could do.  My response was why not provision the ATM bridge 
to 10-13Mbps, and use that to limit the data throughput?  Seems that would 
work, but they said no go.  Frustrating.

> 
> We used to run these things fairly full and fairly hard for extensive
> periods of time.  I think we were able to get about 30Mpbs full duplex out 
> of them.  I doubt that dropping packets at ~6Mpbs is the NetEdges' fault
> (unless you had really old ones).

Yes, it was an old one, and after months of complaining they finally 
delivered a new one yesterday morning.  It is working MUCH better, but as 
soon as the link approaches 6Mbps or more, it starts choking hard.

> The fundamental problem at the upper bound is that you're taking IP, 
> encapsulating it in ethernet or FDDI, then segmenting and further
> encapsulating that (IP inside ethernet/FDDI) inside ATM.  The double 
> encapsulation extracts even more of a tax than the !53 bunch usually 
> complain about.
> 
> If you're interested in a second opinion, you might try contacting NetEdge 
> directly.

Indeed.  That's what I plan on doing today...  Thanks for the input.

> good luck,
> -peter
> 

Joe Shaw - jshaw at insync.net
NetAdmin - Insync Internet Services
"Learn more, and you will never starve." - Paraphrase of Lee