🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <305@fairlight.oz> gary@fairlight.UUCP (Gary Evesson) writes:
> 	2) Appletalk costs a fortune - for no good reason as far as I can see.
> 	   I spoke to a dealer here in Australia who wanted to sell me 100m of
> 	   cable for over A$1,000 ($US650) - he was embarrased, but that's how
> 	   much Apple wanted for it.

	Why bother with "official" AppleTalk at all?  We use PhoneNet from
Faralon (now OEM'ed under various brand names by various people at inflated
prices).  Each connector costs us $39 (US) and you use regular RJ-11
modular phone cables between connectors.  For longer runs, you can use
dirt-cheap twisted-pair 24 guage solid phone cable in the wall.  We already
have several hundred meters in use; adding additional connections is
trivial since we wire to punch-down blocks using existing spare phone
trunks.  PhoneNet can run over arbitrary topology (star, bus, branched
trunk, whatever; we have sort of a branching star mutating towards a blob
with no apparant problems).

	As far as I can tell, PhoneNet is 100% compatible with AppleTalk
and you can freely intermix the two.  As an added bonus, the RJ-11
connectors are much more secure than the new style "push in and hope they
don't fall out" AppleTalk connectors.  I can't imagine trying to administer
a big AppleTalk net; I'd go nuts tracking down which connector got kicked
loose 3 times a week.  Anybody who specs any non-positive-attachement
connector for any kind of network should be shot.  One minor hitch; I don't
know how common RJ-11 (modular phone) connectors are outside North America.
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016