🚀 go-pugleaf

Wolfgang Naegeli <Wolfgang_Naegeli.ED_TSRS@qm01.ctd.ornl.gov> writes:

> If not worthless, the Kinetics boxes still seem to be overpriced, even
> if they were an order of magnitude more reliable than they have been.

You know, I always used to look at them and think "damn, I could build
one of these for a couple hunnerd bucks.  What a ripoff."  Evidence to
the contrary, I suppose, is that now there are several such hardware
devices on the market (Gatorbox, Shiva EtherGate, Webster Multigate)
and those I am familiar with (Gator and Shiva) are about the same
price as a KFP.  If it were really that easy to build a cheap
LocalTalk/Ethernet/AppleTalk/IP gateway, somebody in our wonderful
free-enterprise world would have done it.  Maybe the Hungarians *8^)*.

In terms of KFPs in particular, I think they were much more of a burn
when we had to run university-written software in them.  When I think
of the complexity of writing and maintaining a program like K-Star, it
seems more reasonable to think of the package as a $1K piece of
hardware and a $1K piece of software (university prices *8^)*.
Remember also that as many as we see around us (entirely too many
around here) the market for these things is still pretty limited, if
only because they're so damn hard to set up.

 - RL "Bob" Morgan
   Networking Systems
   Stanford