[379] in Resnet-Forum
Re: High-speed network access from off campus
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Chris Walsh)
Wed Oct 12 11:22:31 1994
From: mack23@pex.eecs.nwu.edu (Chris Walsh)
To: ldg@skidmore.edu (Leo D. Geoffrion)
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 1994 09:56:32 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: reese@staff.circ.gwu.edu, resnet-forum@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <9410121358.AA26813@scott.skidmore.edu> from "Leo D. Geoffrion" at Oct 12, 94 09:58:03 am
Leo D. Geoffrion writes:
>
> Brad Reese writes:
> >
> > At the George Washington University only about 1/5 of our total student body
> > lives in residence halls. We would like to provide the means for high-speed
> > access to our LANs for the rest of the students. Are any other campuses
> > doing this? How?
> >
> For Mac's we've had good success with Apple Remote Access using 14.4
> modems feeding to a Shiva server (there are now 3 or 4 companies
> offering ARA servers).
> Installation is very simple -- feasible for user installation
> Speed is acceptable, Even Mosaic is OK if you turn off
> auto-loading of images.
> Compatibility is excellent with all MacTCP apps running in the
> same (except for speed) manner as on-campus connections.
> ARA offers reasonable password security and logging to assure that
> the whole world does not start using your system, although
> it does not integrate with other system passwords.
>
> We've been experimenting with the comparable Shiva for PC networking,
> but have not achieved similar success.
> The installation is not suitable for user installation
> The speed is painfully slow for even the simplest network tasks.
>
> Has anyone else gotten this to work decently?
>
> We've managed to get SLIP working, but our particular equipment
> (Xyplex terminal servers with optional SLIP services) has lousy
> security. Has someone else had better success with security on the
> Xyplex terminal servers?
Here at EECS at Northwestern, we use Annex 3 terminal servers for
"high speed" access. We do not yet have SLIP up, primarily because
once it is in place I will have to deal with the client-side issues,
and want to get a grip on them before unleashing SLIP. The annexes
come with source code for their access policy stuff, so if "lousy
security" is a concern, you can code up an arbitrarily un-lousy
access policy and use it. The annexes can work with an annex-specific
passwd file, with your system's passwd file, with NIS, with S/Key, with
Kerberos, and (I think!) with SecureID. They also support PPP and ARA,
as I recall, but don't quote me. A good source for terminal server
info is the comp.dcom.servers newsgroup, I've found.
Depending on how fast your modem pool is, this may count as "high speed"
access.
Chris
